American character actor of rather bizarre range, a member of the so-called “John Ford Stock Company.” Originally a New York stage actor of some repute, Whitehead entered films in the 1930s. He played a wide variety of character parts, often quite different from his own actual age and type. He is probably most familiar as Al Joad in ‘John Ford (I)”sThe Grapes of Wrath (1940). But twenty-two years later, in his fifth film for Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Whitehead at 51 was playing a lollipop-licking schoolboy! He continued to work predominantly on the stage, appearing now and again in films or on television. In his last years, he suffered from cancer and died in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland, where he had lived in semi- retirement for many years.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Helen Gilliland was born in Belfast in 1897. She was an opera singer of reknown and sang with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company. She only made one film, “The Storm” in 1938. She was killed during World War Two when the ship she was travelling on with ENSA entertaining the troops was torpedoed in the Far East.
Tommy Clifford was brought to Hollywood from Dublin as a child actor in 1929 along with Maureen O’Sullivan to star in the movie “Song O’ My Heart”. He remained there for one more film “Part Time Wife” .
IMDB entry:
Tommy Clifford was born on September 19, 1918 in Southampton, Hampshire, England. He was an actor, known for Song o’ My Heart (1930) and Part Time Wife (1930). He was married to Dora Ennis. He died on June 14, 1988 in Dublin, Ireland.
Anna Manahan was a very respected Irish actress who achieved major success on Broadway in her mature years. She was born in Waterford in 1924. She acted on stage with the famed Gate theatre in Dublin which was run by Hilton Edwards and Michael MacLiammoir. While on tour with them in Egypt in 1955 her husband became ill after swimming in the Nile and died. In 1957 she had success in Dublin in “The Rose Tattoo”. In 1969 she was on Broadway in Brian Frield’s “Lovers” and in 1998 she won a Tony for her performance in “The Beauty Queen of Leenane”. Her few films include “Clash of the Titans” in 1981, “Hear My Song” and “A Man of No Importance”. On television she won critical praise for her performances in “Me Mammy”, “The Irish R.M” as the housekeeper Mrs Cadogan and “Fair City”. She died in 2009 at the age of 84.
Anna Manahan, who has died at the age of 84, enjoyed a career of almost 60 years as one of Ireland’s most distinguished actors, which also brought her before the British television audience from the 1960s to the 80s. A charming, even seductive, presence on stage or screen, she could be waspish and egotistical in private life, a characteristic that she was not concerned to conceal. Though she was generally quiet and reserved, her temper could flare up when occasion demanded, and she could be, as the leading Irish critic Fintan O’Toole said, “a proud and formidable rebel”.
Born in Waterford, in the south-east of Ireland, Manahan was an almost exact contemporary of Siobhán McKenna, but adroitly avoided comparison with her more celebrated compatriot. She studied under the legendary Ria Mooney alongside Milo O’Shea, Marie Keane and Jack MacGowran, and found her early success in the company of Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLíammóir’s Dublin Gate theatre. Having married a fellow actor, Colm O’Kelly, she was touring in Egypt with the Gate in 1956 when O’Kelly, who was working as the stage manager, suddenly died. As MacLíammóir recorded in his diary, Manahan insisted on appearing that night: “The fact that she can contemplate [it] at all is a part of the stuff of which players are made.” There were no children and she never remarried.
Manahan was a totally professional actor, with three very distinctive qualities: she was faithful to the text; she was a formidable presence, with an emotional expressiveness to match; and she had the striking capacity to be quintessentially Irish without being “Oirish”.
O’Toole thought that Manahan learned her steeliness in the face of the 1957 attempt to ban the Dublin production of Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo, in which she excelled as Serafina. But MacLíammóir had noticed that her bereavement had already changed this “dark and buxom character actress, usually bashful and diffident”, into a strongly self-reliant personality. “She never played with greater absorption, with more truth, with slyer or wickeder humour,” he wrote of her performance on the night of O’Kelly’s death. “One can only bow one’s head before this sort of courage and this sort of grief.”
In 1958 Manahan created the role of Big Rachel in John Arden’s Live Like Pigs at the Royal Court theatre, and she remained both a “big” figure on stage (with John B Keane creating the lead in Big Maggie for her) and a familiar one in the West End, in Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr Sloane and as June in Frank Marcus’s The Killing of Sister George.
Nominated for a Tony award for best supporting actress in 1969 for her role in Brian Friel’s two-hander Lovers (with Niall Tóibín), she won the award 30 years later as Mags Folan in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane. It was her return to Broadway as a grande dame of the stage after decades mainly on television, and demonstrated her capacity for bleakness and depravity, in contrast to her easygoing domesticated televisual presence.
Nevertheless, TV came naturally to Manahan, first in the Irish rural soap opera The Riordans, followed by Hugh Leonard’s Me Mammy (1968-71) for the BBC, in which – though in reality only two years his senior – she played Milo O’Shea’s strongly Catholic mother. She took the title role in RTÉ’s sitcom Leave It to Mrs O’Brien in the 1980s and the cook, Mrs Cadogan (or O Cadagain), opposite the harassed Peter Bowles in the RTÉ-Channel 4 adaptation of Somerville and Ross’s The Irish RM. She returned to soap opera as Ursula in RTÉ’s urban serial Fair City in 2005.
Manahan’s last stage role was in the 2005 production of the one-woman monologue Sisters, written for her by Declan Hassett. It toured Ireland and travelled to Colorado and Broadway.
When the Irish government announced in 2008 that healthcare entitlement to citizens over 70 would be restricted on budgetary grounds, Manahan made a noisy public protest, suggesting that the taoiseach and other leading politicians should be pilloried. As a result, she became first patron of Active Retirement Ireland.
She received the gold medal of the Eire Society of Boston in 1984, the freedom of her native city in 2002 and, in 2003, an honorary doctorate from the University of Limerick and the Woman of the Year drama award.
John Arden writes: I had never heard of Anna Manahan when Anthony Page, a director at the Royal Court, brought her over to London to play Big Rachel in my first play, Live Like Pigs, in 1958. Margaretta D’Arcy, already in the cast, had acted with her in Dublin, and assured me we would see something extraordinary. Indeed we did.
Anna played opposite Wilfred Lawson, who would cautiously and meticulously build up his part from some small prop or bit of business – he once spent a morning’s rehearsal playing little games with a bowler hat until he knew what he wanted to do with it, and thus what he needed to do with the entire scene – whereas Anna allowed the essential spirit of the role to burst from her like an uncoiled spring of rhetorical ecstasy. This contrast of style created a constant mutual irritation; the irritation created the contrast and conflict between the characters, till Rachel finally stalked off the stage, abandoning her ancient companion.
Margaretta D’Arcy writes: The last time I met Anna was in New York, where she was playing in The Beauty Queen of Leenane; she invited me to a memorial mass for the actor and singer Agnes Bernelle, a generous gift of remembrance for that other old warrior.
Anna was the last of a splendid breed of women warriors in Irish theatre – among them the actor-managers Nora Lever, Phyllis Ryan and Carolyn Swift – who all kept the flame alive in the bleak and famished 50s, working away on shoestrings, with little recognition and often some ridicule. They put theatre ahead of their personal lives, and had social consciences, too, which now and again leaped out like the furies. Anna’s passion did not remain within the confines of the proscenium.
I was involved with JM Synge’s The Tinker’s Wedding at the 37 theatre club in 1952, the first production of that play in Ireland: Anna, astride the cart, defying the priest, refusing to pay the marriage money, broadcast the same defiance only last year over the issue of medical cards for the over-70. s All hail, warrior queen!
• Anna Maria Manahan, actor, born 18 October 1924; died 8 March 2009.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Dictionary of Irish Biography
Manahan, Anna (Maria) (1924–2009), actress, was born on 18 October 1924 in Waterford city, third child in a family of three sons and three daughters of Patrick Manahan (d. 1967) and Mary Manahan (née Barry). Her father was a clerk in the margarine manufacturing business of W. and C. McDonnell, and later the manager of a local ballroom, well known as a member of a theatrical family and as a comedian and singer in amateur and semi-professional opera and dramatic productions. His brother W. A. Manahan had a dance band popular in the south-east of Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s; Anna’s cousin Sheila Manahan (1924–88) was a stage and film actress in England.
Anna grew up in Lombard Street, Waterford, and was educated by the Mercy nuns, who encouraged her to perform in school plays. She joined Waterford Dramatic Society and, after leaving school, moved to Dublin to study in the celebrated Gaiety theatrical school run by Ria Mooney (qv). Contemporaries there included Milo O’Shea (qv), Eamonn Andrews (qv) and Marie Kean (qv), and she was to act with many of them throughout her later career. After only a few weeks in the school, Mooney suggested that Anna should gain experience with a touring fit-up company, Equity Productions. In 1946 a promised move to Hollywood and film appearances did not materialise when the talent scout’s company failed. Manahan went to London to look for roles there, with limited success, but in 1949 came home to be with her eldest sister Ellen, known as Billie, who died in May that year. Anna then had a season in Limerick with the 37 Theatre Company; she was spotted as a promising young actress by the directors Hilton Edwards (qv) and Michéal MacLiammóir (qv), and spent seven years in their Dublin Gate Theatre company.
A colleague, Colm O’Kelly (brother of Kevin O’Kelly (qv)), an actor in the 37 Theatre Company and stage manager with Edwards and MacLiammóir, helped her through anxiety attacks and depression after her sister’s death, and they married in Waterford cathedral on 14 June 1955. The Munster Express of 17 June 1955 headlined the ‘happy ending to the romance of the Irish stage’, but the happy ending was to elude the young couple. They travelled with the Gate Theatre on a tour of Egypt in 1956; Colm O’Kelly contracted polio, probably after swimming in the river Nile, and died after only a few hours in hospital, on the morning of 10 April 1956. True to theatrical tradition, Anna Manahan took her place on stage that same night, playing in a comedy, but after her husband’s funeral in Alexandria, travelled home on her own. In later years she had several important relationships, but never remarried. Acting helped her to cope with her personal loss, which in turn allowed her to draw on depths of emotion and understanding to perform a range of classic roles.
She became a household name in 1957 after her first starring role, in the first Dublin Theatre Festival. She appeared in the tiny Pike Theatre, Dublin, in Tennessee Williams’s notorious play ‘The rose tattoo’, directed by Alan Simpson (qv). The first reviews were very favourable, but the play ran into serious difficulties when someone who had presumably been a member of the audience reported to the Gardaí that Manahan’s character, Serafina, dropped a condom on the stage. In fact, the action was merely mimed, there was no condom; but at a time when stage censorship regulations reflected the catholic church’s attitudes to obscenity and to contraceptive devices, the authorities responded quickly by arresting the director. The resultant controversy was one of several episodes in a continuing struggle over censorship, between the avant-garde, abetted by well-known troublemakers like Brendan Behan (qv), and the conservative elements in Irish society; though Simpson was acquitted, after a year of misery, the theatre was forced to close because of his financial difficulties.
Manahan’s career seldom faltered thereafter, and she was internationally known for her appearances in scores of successful shows. Her physical presence and earthy strength impressed directors and audiences in various theatres from the 1950s up to her last stage appearance in ‘Sisters’ (2005); she worked in the Gate in Dublin, in the National Theatre and others in London, and on Broadway and in theatre festivals around the world. She created the role of Big Rachel in ‘Live like pigs’ (1958) by John Arden (qv) in London, and John B. Keane (qv) wrote the play ‘Big Maggie’ (1969) with Manahan in mind to play the leading eponymous character. In 1969 Manahan was nominated for the Tony award, for best supporting actress, in a Broadway production of ‘Lovers’ by Brian Friel. Almost thirty years later, in 1998, in a very different role, she won a Tony award for her appearance as ‘featured actress’ in the part of Mag Folan, the repellent, slovenly, scheming mother, in ‘The beauty queen of Leenane’, by Martin McDonagh. The play toured Ireland, transferred to London, and ran for eighteen months on Broadway.
Irish and British audiences might not have expected Manahan to perform with quite such power and viciousness as she showed in Mag Folan; for years before her appearance in McDonagh’s play, Manahan had been somewhat typecast in more comic roles, particularly on television. She became familiar to a wide viewing public as Milo O’Shea’s ‘Irish mammy’ in Me mammy (BBC, 1968–71), written by Hugh Leonard (qv); as the cook Mrs Cadogan in the RTÉ/Channel 4 series The Irish RM (1983–5); and in RTÉ dramas and soap operas, including The Riordans and Fair city (playing Ursula, 2004–9). She also appeared in radio dramas, television films and in a few films for the big screen. Her first film, She didn’t say no! (1958), was about a woman (not her character) with six illegitimate children by different men (unsurprisingly, the film was banned in Ireland). She also played Bella Cohen in a film version of Ulysses (1967) and appeared in Black day at Blackrock(2001; written and directed by Gerry Stembridge).
In later life Manahan returned to Waterford and lived with two of her brothers. As a way of giving something back to the life of the theatre which had sustained her since her own childhood, she gladly participated for years as a judge in amateur dramatic festivals round the country. A different kind of celebrity came to her in 2008 when she spoke out vehemently against cuts in health care which would affect old people; her widely reported contribution to the controversy greatly helped the campaign to have medical cards restored to some older people. Even before her being selected as celebrity patron of Active Retirement Ireland in 2008, Manahan’s views had already had an impact on attitudes to older people. In 2004, speaking in the Waterford Area Partnership’s ‘age and power’ conference, she had suggested the establishment of a Golden Years Festival in Waterford to celebrate the achievements of older people and encourage creativity and participation in society. It was successfully set up and marked ten years of existence in 2014.
In 2002 Waterford showed appreciation of one of its most famous natives by making Anna Manahan a freeman of the city, and she was posthumously included in a permanent exhibition of ‘Waterford treasures’ in the Bishop’s Palace. Manahan also won the gold medal of the Eire Society of Boston in 1984, and in 2003 received an honorary doctorate in letters from the University of Limerick. She was the subject of a documentary, All about Anna, screened by RTÉ in 2005.
After a long illness she died in Waterford on 8 March 2009, and was buried in Ballygunner cemetery
Arthur Shields was born in 1896 in Dublin and is the younger brother of Barry Fitzgerald. Like his sibling, he came a player with the famous Abbey Theatre and travelled with them on tour to the U.S. and in 1936 went to Hollywood to work for John Ford in “The Plough and the Stars”. He remained there and was featured in scores of movies including “How Green Was My Valley” in 1941, “The Keys of the Kingdom” and “National Velvet”. He died in 1970 in Santa Barbara.
Arthur Shields features extensively in Adrian Frazier in “Hollywood Irish”.
IMDB entry:
Though not as well known as his nearly decade-older brother Barry Fitzgerald, Shields was a talented actor with well over twice the film roles in his career. Fitzgerald was already a well established player at the renowned Dublin Abbey Theater when Shields, also bitten by the acting bug, joined in 1914. He performed but was also out front directing plays. Already he had dabbled in the new medium of Irish film (1910) with two notable examples (1918). There was more to the seemingly mild-mannered Shields than met the eye. His family was Protestant Nationalist and he himself fought in the Easter Uprising of 1916. And he was in fact captured and imprisoned in a camp in North Wales. Late in 1918 he came to America and first helped bring Irish comedy and drama to Broadway. He would continue to appear on Broadway for some 24 plays until 1941, especially reviving two Abbey Theater favorites from the hand of Sean O’Casey, “The Plow and the Stars” and “Juno and the Peacock”, the latter being produced and staged by him in 1940. Still not settled, Shields was back in Dublin through most of the 1920s but returned to Broadway almost full time in 1932 moving through the repertory of Irish plays. When John Ford finally convinced his brother – and some other Abbey players — to come to Hollywood to do the 1935 film version of Juno and the Peacock, Broadway veteran Shields was asked to take the pivotal part of Padraic (Patrick) Pearse, perhaps the most important leader of the Easter Rising.
By early 1939 he was finished with his concentration on Broadway and found Ford eager to offer him a part in his Revolutionary period adventure Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) as the matter-of-fact pioneer minister with a good shooting eye-Reverence Rosenkrantz. Ministers, reverends, priests, and other assorted clerics would be a Shields staple throughout his career – and he always managed to breath an individual humanity into each and every one. From then on through the 1940s he was in demand as character actor
and not just Irish roles as Fitzgerald with his gravelly, prominent
brogue, found himself. Along with the aforementioned men of the cloth, Shields was provided a steady offering of the gamut of Hollywood’s character storehouse-Irish and otherwise. And among them were parts for some of Ford’s most memorable films: How Green Was My Valley (1941) and especially The Quiet Man (1952). Here again, he was a cleric but a uniquely sympathetic one-the lone Protestant Reverend Dr. Playfair-who John Wayne affectionately calls “Padre” in the vastly Catholic village of the film. He alone knows the former identity of Wayne and convinces the latter of his final struggle to go on with his new life in Ireland. Enough said – with a wonderful cast of Ford stalwarts and native Irish (including Fizgerald), this was Ford’s long awaited crowning achievement.
Though Shields was taking on the occasional film through the 1950s, most of his time was going to television. Along with TV playhouse roles he became a most familiar face of episodic TV with a variety of roles (even the old Mickey Mouse Club Hardy Boy Adventures), especially in the ever-popular TV Western genera. Aside from his numerous appearances in plays throughout his career, all told Arthur Shields screen appearances approached nearly 100 memorable acting endeavors.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: William McPeak
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Kate Price was an Irish actress who appeared in U.S. films in the first half of the 20th century. She was born Katherine Duffy in Cork in 1872. She began featuring in silent films in 1910 and had an extensive career.In the 1930’s she still appeared on film but often in small and sometimes uncredited roles. Her later movies inluded “Have A Heart” in 1934, “West Point of the Air” andin 1937, “Easy Living” her final film. She died in 1943 in Los Angeles.
Brian Phelan was born in 1934 in Dublin. He began his career on British television in 1960. Among his film credits are “The Criminal” with Stanley Baker, “The Kitchen”, “H.M.D. Defiant” and “Four in the Morning” with Judi Dench in 1964. His partner is the actress Dorothy Bromiley.
Brian Phelan (born December 2, 1934) is an Irish actor, dramatist, and screenwriter. His works include A High Wind in Jamaica (1965), The Knockback (two parts, 1985), and The Treaty (1991).
Phelan was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1934. He first apprenticed as a carpenter at the age of 15.[ When Phelan was eighteen, he and his family immigrated to Canada. While there, he was able to obtain his first professional job at the Crest Theatre in Toronto as an assistant stage carpenter.
In 1956, Phelan returned to Dublin to pursue his acting career. He appeared in productions at the Abbey Theatre, the Gate Theatre with the Edwards McLiammoir Company, and the Pike Theatre in the 1950s.[
While he continued to work as a full-time actor in the 1960s, Phelan began his screenwriting career.[ His first television play was The Tormentors (1966), starring James Mason and Stanley Baker, produced by ATV. Writing predominantly for television, Phelan’s other works include The Russian Soldier (BBC, 1986), The Emigrants (BBC, 1977), In the Secret State(BBC, 1985), The Ivory Trade (HBO), and No Tears (RTÉ One, 2002).[ Phelan has written for films as well, including Little Mother (also known as Woman of the Year, 1973), Honeybaby, Honeybaby (1974), and Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy (1989). His stage plays include The Signalman’s Apprentice (1971), which has been produced worldwide, Article Five, Paddy, News, and Soft Shoe Shuffle. In 1961, Phelan co-presented with Robin Fox the first production of Tom Murphy’sA Whistle in the Dark at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Apollo Theatre.
Lost close to thirty pounds to play Frank in Angela’s Ashes (1999). While at school, he appeared in a variety of plays, both modern and classic. He is a ten-year veteran of theater in his Northern Ireland hometown.
Frank McCourt‘s novel “Angela’s Ashes” had been his mom’s, aunt’s, and grandmother’s favorite book. He appeared as Older Frank in the film version of the novel.
Was encouraged to act at school by drama teacher Sean Hollywood, who was respected and renowned throughout Ireland for his talent-scouting of young actors in the Newry district. TCM Overview:
Lanky, dark-haired, freckle-faced Michael Legge came to moviegoers’ attention as the older incarnation of narrator Frank McCourt in the “Angela’s Ashes” (1999), the film adaptation of McCourt’s Pulitzer-winning memoir. A native of Newry in Northern Ireland, Legge was already a veteran stage and TV performer when he won that role over some 15,000 aspirants.
As a child, he came to the attention of drama teacher Sean Hollywood who encouraged the youngster. Work in local theater followed as did a featured role in the 1996 British television drama “The Precious Blood”. 1999 proved to be a banner year for Legge as he landed pivotal roles in three features. In addition to his finely wrought portrayal of McCourt in “Angela’s Ashes”,
Michael Legge
he demonstrated his versatility as a teenager who discovers the hideaway of three feral youths during an unnamed conflict in the intense, Swedish-made “Straydogs” and displayed his comic gifts and natural charm as a disco-loving teen in 1977 Sheffield in “Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?”.The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Maureen Delany was a wonderful Irish actress who enlivened mamy British films of the 1940’s. She was born in Kilkennyin 1888.Her film debut came in 1924 in “Land of Her Fathers”. Her cinema highlights include “Odd Man Out” in 1947, “The Mark of Cain”, “Captain Boycott”and her final film “The Doctor’s Dilemma” with Dirk Bogarde in 1958. She died in 1961.
“Wikipedia” entry:
She was born in Kilkenny, daughter of Dr. Barry Delany, who died when she was three months old. She was educated in Galway and originally intended to train for the opera, as she had a fine singing voice. However, she was accepted into the Abbey School of Acting by Lennox Robinson. She made her debut on the stage in Edward McNulty’s comedy The Lord Mayor in 1914.[
Delany, Maureen (c.1888–1961), actress, was born in Kilkenny, daughter of Dr Barry Delany, medical officer to the Kilkenny mental home, and his Kerry-born wife (née Nagle). Her father died when she was three months old. She was educated at the Dominican College in Galway and originally intended to train for opera as she had a fine singing voice, inherited from her father. However, she was accepted to the Abbey School of Acting, then run by Lennox Robinson (qv) and J. M. Kerrigan (1885–1964). After training she made her debut on 13 March 1914 as the mayoress in Edward McNulty’s comedy ‘The lord mayor’, and was commended by the Evening Mail. She quickly became a staple of the Abbey company and as early as 1916, the inveterate playgoer Joseph Holloway (qv) was praising her acting as ‘delightfully explosive’ (Holloway, 189). He was a constant admirer and in 1920, commenting on ‘The golden apple’ by Lady Gregory (qv), he noted that Delany’s ‘comic art and figure grow apace . . . there was a whimsical drollery about all she did’ (Holloway, 207). Delany was by this stage a noted comic actress and singer and among the best loved of the Abbey players. Lady Gregory found her rendition of ‘Oft in the stilly night’ in ‘Aristotle’s bellows’ in March 1921, very fine. Sean O’Casey (qv) was also an admirer and Delany gave vent to her full comic potential to become identified with two of his most noted character parts – Maisie Madigan in ‘Juno and the Paycock’ and Bessie Burgess in ‘The plough and the stars’. O’Casey even introduced a song for Maisie Madigan at her request. After the riotous opening of ‘The plough and the stars’ in February 1926, the Irish Times reported that a member of the audience had deliberately struck Delany in the face, but the actors themselves denied this.
Another part which Dublin theatregoers considered she made her own was the Widow Quin in ‘The playboy of the western world’ by J. M. Synge (qv). However, the critic Hugh Hunt (qv), assessing her career, noted that she played all her famous character parts in the same manner: ‘Large, warm-hearted, with a permanent twinkle in her eye . . . Maureen was not a great actress, but she was a superb performer. For over twenty years she was to play herself on the stage without varying her characterisation by a twitch of her eyebrow, to the utter delight of her public’ (Hunt, 118). The Dublin audience’s appreciation probably prevented her development and froze her mannerisms; the American critic George Jean Nathan, writing on the Abbey’s 1937 American tour, called the company ‘a caricature of its former self . . . [it] is obviously unable to control its fundamentally talented but personally over-cocky actress, Maureen Delany, and to prevent her from indulging in an outrageous overplaying, winking, snorting, and mugging that wreck any serious play she is in’ (Newsweek, 27 Dec. 1937). Her Times obituary noted that the Dublin audience often began to laugh even before she spoke.
In 1940 she appeared as a housekeeper in ‘Where stars walk’, the earliest comedy of Micheál MacLíammóir (qv), at the Gate, and thereafter appeared in numerous Gate productions. She had few film appearances but was part of the talented cast of mainly Irish actors in Carol Reed’s thriller Odd man out (1947), set in Belfast. In the late 1940s she moved to London, where she appeared in small character roles, getting mainly good reviews although The Timesnoted of her performance in Noel Coward’s ‘Waiting in the wings’ at the Duke of York’s Theatre, September 1960, that she could not help overacting. She died in her room at a London Hotel on 27 March 1961 and was predeceased by her husband Peter O’Neill, whom she married about 1947; there were no children
Patrick Kielty is an Irish comedian and television personalty who has made some films. He was born in Northern Ireland in 1971. His films include “Get Up, Stand Up” in 1998. He is married to Cat Deely. His webpage here.
Jacqueline Ryan was a talented child actress who had the lead in the film “Jacqueline” in 1956 with Kathleen Ryan, John Gregson, Maureen Swanson and Tony Wright.
It was her only film. She is the daughter of the great Irish actress and producer Phyllis Ryan.
Ruaidhri Conroy was born in Dublin in 1979 and is the son of actor Brendan Conroy. In 1992 he gave a brilliant performance in “Into the West” with Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin. In 1998 he won plaudits for his tremendous performance on stage as Billy Clavin in Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan”. Other movies include “Fools of Fortune”, “Hear My Song”, “Hart’s War” and “Six-Shooter”.
Brendan Coyle is currently earning rave reviews for his performance as the valet John Bates in the hughly successful television series “Downton Abbey”. He was born in Corby in 1963 to an Irish father and a Scottish mother. He trained in drama in Dublin. He won early parise for his performance in “The Weir” on the London stage. He has had an extensive television career including “Lark Rise to Candleford” and “North and South”. His films include “Conspiracy” in 2001 and “Tomorrow Never Dies”. He holds both Irish and British citizenships.
IMDB entry:
Brendan Coyle was born in Corby, Northamptonshire to an Irish father and Scottish mother; his parents moved to Corby from County Tyrone, Ireland. Brendan holds Irish citizenship and has previously lived in Dublin and London. However, according to a video clip from the site for “Rockface” he resides in Norfolk.
Brendan is also the great nephew of footballing (i.e. soccer) legend Sir Matt Busby of Manchester United fame.
Brendan trained at drama school in Dublin, founded in the late 1960s as the Focus Theatre, was co-founded by his aunt Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy. Brendan started there in 1981 and then received a scholarship to Mountview Theatre School in England in 1983. He has directed at least two plays at Mountview since graduating from there.
Brendan has done a number of stage, television, and movie productions, including the play “The Weir” for which he won an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Performance award for his part as the bartender, Brendan. He continues to work on stage, in film and on television.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Stacy L.A. Stronach <slashgirl@yahoo.com>
TCM overview:
An English-born actor with Irish and Scottish roots, Brendan Coyle got his start in a slew of theatrical productions. He quietly rose through the ranks of U.K. screen actors with small roles in everything from “The Glass Virgin” (ITV, 1995) to the James Bond adventure “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997), but earned acclaim for his stage work, winning a Laurence Olivier Award for his work in “The Weir.” Continuing to work steadily in British-made productions like “North & South” (BBC One, 2004) and “Lark Rise to Candleford” (BBC One, 2008-11), Coyle appeared in such international fare as “The Jacket” (2005) with Adrien Brody and “The Raven” (2012) with John Cusack. His international breakthrough came as the physically impaired but passionate John Bates, valet to Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) on the global smash “Downton Abbey” (ITV, 2010- ). Grounding his ill-fated character in humanity and compassion, Coyle stood out in the enormously talented ensemble, earning widespread praise. As his fame increased around the world, Coyle left many fans and critics alike hoping to see much more of him on stage and screen.
Born Dec. 2, 1963 in Corby, Northamptonshire, England, Coyle was the son of an Irish father and a Scottish mother, as well as the great-nephew of soccer legend Sir Matt Busby of Manchester United. Determined not to become a butcher like his father, Coyle found his calling when he saw his first play as a teenager, Shakespeare’s Richard III, and was overcome by a desire to make a living himself as an actor. Luckily, his cousin was a theater director in Dublin, Ireland, and when he finished his schooling – following a year of apprenticing to his father – Coyle moved to the Emerald Isle to train with her. After cutting his professional teeth with her company as an actor and stage manager, he earned a scholarship to the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London, and soon launched his stage career with roles in “Over the Bridge,” “All Souls Night” and “Playboy of the Western World.”
Coyle made his screen debut with small roles in the made-for-TV movie “Fool’s Gold: The Story of the Brink’s-MAT Robbery” (1992) and on the TV series “The Bill” (ITV, 1984-2010). Building on his momentum, he began to earn a reputation as a versatile actor with memorable performances in the miniseries “The Glass Virgin” (ITV, 1995) and on the shows “Dangerfield” (BBC, 1995-99), “Silent Witness” (BBC One, 1996- ) and “Thief Takers” (ITV, 1995-97), before earning a small turn in a major international blockbuster as a seaman in the James Bond thriller “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997). As he was rising through the screen ranks, Coyle was also working steadily in theater, earning raves for his performance in “The Weir,” which he played in London as well as on Broadway, winning a 1999 Laurence Olivier Award as well as a New York Critics Theater World Award.
Coyle’s professional ascent continued as he picked up larger roles in “McCready and Daughter” (BBC, 2001) and on “Paths to Freedom” (RTÉ, 2000) and “Rebel Heart” (BBC, 2001). International audiences, however, began to take note of him with his role as the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller in the Kenneth Branagh-Stanley Tucci based-on-real-life Nazi historical drama “Conspiracy” (BBC/HBO, 2000). He continued to notch acclaimed work in European productions, including high-profile roles on “Rockface” (BBC, 2002-03) and “North & South” (BBC One, 2004), as well as starring as the famous Irish politician Michael Collins in “Allegiance” (2005) while finding time to take a supporting turn in the time travel thriller “The Jacket” (2005), starring Keira Knightley and Adrien Brody.
Coyle went on to notch roles on “True Dare Kiss” (BBC One, 2007) and “Lark Rise to Candleford” (BBC One, 2008-2011), which earned him ever more acclaim. Although he appeared in the John Cusack Edgar Allen Poe-thriller “The Raven” (2012) and on the series “Starlings” (Sky1, 2012- ), Coyle’s true international breakthrough came with his work on the global smash “Downton Abbey” (ITV, 2010- ). Playing John Bates, the valet and former Boer War batman to Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), Coyle gave vivid life to a character whose physical disability masked a powerful spirit. Viewers were glued to the set when the seemingly friendless Bates fell in love with the kindhearted maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt), only to be shocked when it was revealed that he still had a wife who was very much alive – until she was poisoned and Bates was convicted of her murder. His powerful, but understated work earned Coyle a devoted fanbase as well as an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
By Jonathan Riggs
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Tall & handsome James Lilburn was the younger brother of Maureen O’Hara. He was born in Dublin in 1927. He made his movie debut with his sister and John Wayne in the classic “The Quiet Man” as the young curate Fr Paul. He then went on to Hollywood and made such movies as “What Price Glory”, “Titanic”, “Desert Rats”, “Suddenly” and “The Long GrayLine”. He died in 1992 in Glendale, California.
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Jeremy Irons. Overview.
Jeremy Irons was born in Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1948. His breakthrough roles occured with “Brideshead Revisited” in 1981 and on film “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” with Meryl Streep. He has several notable films to his credit including “Moonlighting”, “Dead Ringers”, “Damage”, “M Butterfly” and is Oscar winning movie “Reversal of Fortune” with Glenn Close in 1990. He is married to Irish actress Sinead Cusack and has a home in West Cork. His son is the actor Max Irons.
TCM Overview:
Classically trained stage actor Jeremy Irons enjoyed one of the most varied international film careers of his peers, going beyond the expected costume dramas to offer award-winning performances as men of all eras and motives. Leveraging his rich, haunting voice for both good and evil, Irons elicited deep-seated discomfort in films like “Dead Ringers” (1988) and “Reversal of Fortune” (1990), but romanced with charming nobility in “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981) and “Being Julia” (2004). Irons earned two of his handful of Golden Globe nods while exploring British culture in the television miniseries “Brideshead Revisited” (ITV/PBS, 1981) and “Elizabeth I” (HBO, 2006), but was cast as everything from artists to executives by some of the most renowned directors in the international film community, including Louis Malle, Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Zeffirelli and Wayne Wang. Irons made his mark in everything from period films to studio blockbusters to everything in between, playing one of the original Musketeers in “The Man in the Iron Mask” (1998), an over-the-top villain in “Dungeons & Dragons” (2000), Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice” (2004), and a cold-blooded investment banking CEO in “Margin Call” (2011). Meanwhile, he made a rare turn to the small screen to give an acclaimed performance as Pope Alexander VI on the widely hailed cable series, “The Borgias” (Showtime, 2011- ). Regardless of the role or medium, Irons could always be counted on to deliver still waters that ran deep – often deep into the realms of great emotional anguish.
Irons was born on England’s Isle of Wight on Sept. 19, 1948. While a boarding school student in Dorset, Irons could often be found performing, sometimes with his four-piece band (as the drummer) and sometimes in comedy skits for school events. He decided to pursue a future on stage and studied drama at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, where he got his professional start as a member of the company beginning in the late 1960s. After several years of acting in modern dramas and Shakespeare alike, Irons made his London stage debut in 1971 playing John the Baptist in “Godspell,” a role that employed the actor for two years. On screen, Irons first gained notice for his portrayal of classical composer Franz Liszt in the British miniseries, “Notorious Woman” (PBS, 1975). Following a starring role in the 1977 British television miniseries “Love for Lydia,” Irons made a less-than-stellar big screen debut as Mikhail Fokine in Herbert Ross’ biopic, “Nijinsky” (1980), but became internationally renowned when he was cast opposite Meryl Streep in the romantic drama, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1981), based on John Fowles’ novel.
Jeremy Irons
Hot on the heels of Irons’ BAFTA-nominated performance in that film, he took the lead as observant narrator Charles Ryder in the TV adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” (ITV/PBS, 1981). The international television event was one of the most lauded of the year, earning Irons his first Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. He went on to more eclectic roles, playing the caddish lover in David Jones’ critically acclaimed adaptation of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” (1983), but was miscast as Proust’s hero in “Swann in Love” (1984). In 1984, Irons made his Broadway debut and took home a Tony Award for Best Actor for the Mike Nichols-directed “The Real Thing,” written by Tom Stoppard and co-starring Glenn Close. Two years later, Irons appeared in a Royal Shakespeare Theater production of “The Winter’s Tale” and was back in the film spotlight for his Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of an 18th century Jesuit priest touring South America in Roland Joffe’s “The Mission” (1986).
After starring as Richard II on the London stage, Irons gave a bravura dual performance as deranged twin brother doctors in David Cronenberg’s classic creeper “Dead Ringers” (1988). In another career highlight, Irons won Academy and Golden Globe Awards for his portrayal of real-life international playboy and suspected murderer Claus von Bulow in Barbet Schroeder’s “Reversal of Fortune” (1990), which reunited him with Glenn Close. Irons’ haughty, conniving performance made a strong impact, but Irons avoided villainous typecasting by displaying versatility with his leading role as a paranoid insurance clerk in Steven Soderbergh’s psychological thriller, “Kafka” (1991), a history teacher haunted by memories of his childhood in “Waterland” (1992), and a conservative English politician undone by an obsessive affair with his son’s girlfriend in Louis Malle’s “Damage” (1992). Although he tried gamely, his reunion with Cronenberg for “M. Butterfly” (1993) failed to impress critics or audiences, and his second film with Streep and Close, “The House of the Spirits” (1993), unfortunately miscast the team of great thespians as South American aristocrats.
Irons rebounded with a box office and critical hit by providing the sinuous voice of the subtly villainous Scar in Disney’s monster animated hit, “The Lion King” (1994). In an effective follow-up bad guy role, he was next cast as the action film cliché “evil foreigner” opposite Bruce Willis in the popular sequel “Die Hard With a Vengeance” (1995). The actor’s next two roles were thematically linked. In Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” (1996), Irons starred as an ailing writer reinvigorated when confronted with the voluptuous teenaged Liv Tyler, while in Adrian Lyne’s remake of “Lolita” (1997), he was well-chosen to play classic literary character Humbert Humbert, also enamored of the pubescent title character (Dominique Swain). Irons’ run of lovelorn leading roles also included director Wayne Wang’s “Chinese Box” (1997), in which Irons was a leukemia-ridden, Hong Kong-based financial reporter who has long held a torch for a bar owner and former “hostess” (Gong Li) from mainland China.
Iconic in the role of Father Aramis in the adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ adventure “The Man In the Iron Mask” (1998), starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Irons’ talents were thereafter squandered in the legendary flop “Dungeons and Dragons” (2000). He balanced the scales with accomplished turns in higher-brow fare including the A&E miniseries, “Longitude” (2000), as a 20th century naval officer who discovers 18th Century clockmaker John Harrison’s abandoned clocks and restores them. A widely praised portrayal of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Showtime telepic “Last Call” (2002), about the tortured author’s final months, was followed by a turn in director Franco Zeffirelli’s biopic “Callas Forever” (2002), as opera legend Maria Callas’ friend and former manager. The actor became entangled with another musician in “And Now…Ladies and Gentlemen” (2003), in which he starred as a dissatisfied criminal mastermind who sets out on a one-man sailing trip around the world to find meaning in his life and becomes caught up with a burned-out jazz singer (Patricia Kaas).
In 2004, Irons turned in a pair of particularly fine performances, first tapping into his considerable Shakespearean track record to play a disdainful Antonio arguing over the pound of flesh with Al Pacino’s Shylock in “William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice” (2004). He then co-starred as the agreeably cuckolded husband-manager of an aging, diva-like 1930s stage actress (Annette Bening) who takes up a dalliance of his own in director Istvan Szabo’s brilliant, “Being Julia” (2004). In director Ridley Scott’s disappointing “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005), however, only Irons, in the role of the Jerusalem king’s closest adviser, had a role juicy enough to withstand the film’s otherwise furious scenery-chewing. “Casanova” (2005), director Lasse Hallstrom’s fictionalized account of the legendary lothario (Heath Ledger) falling in love at last, was easily one of the most ill-conceived and disappointing films of the year, despite lavish production values and a game performance by Irons, who lustily attacked his role as the villainous Catholic Church inquisitor Pucci, who is out to execute the renowned libertine for heresy.
However there was plenty of positive attention on Irons the following year when he joined the cast of the lavish miniseries “Elizabeth I” (Channel 4 UK/ HBO, 2006). While Helen Mirren earned soaring reviews for her incomparable portrayal of the Virgin Queen, Irons matched her talent with his performance as Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth’s lover and most trusted, if conflicted, confidant. The British production swept the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards that year, garnering two supporting actor trophies for Irons. Meanwhile, Irons appeared on movie screens as a film director in David Lynch’s enigmatic “Inland Empire” (2006) and in the far more accessible but considerably less original family fantasy blockbuster, “Eragon” (2006). Returning to the London stage, Irons had a starring run playing conservative post-war British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan in “Never So Good” and went on to co-star on Broadway opposite Joan Allen in “Impressionism,” which paired the two as world-weary artist and gallery owner who fall in love.
Allen and Irons coupled again on the small screen that year in the biopic “Georgia O’Keeffe” (Lifetime, 2009), which chronicled the early career of the famous painter (Allen) and her professional-turned-romantic relationship with influential New York photographer and art gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz (Irons). Irons’ absorbing performance led to Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor in a TV Movie. Also at the time, Irons returned to the stage opposite Allen in the Broadway production of Michael Jacobs’ play “Impressionism” (2009). Back on screen, he starred in the well-received historical drama, “The Borgias” (Showtime, 2011), a series created by Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan that focused on the corrupt and murderous Italian Renaissance family headed by Roderic Borgia (Irons), who went on to become the debased Pope Alexander VI. The role earned Irons a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a drama series. Also that year, he returned to features with “Margin Call” (2011), playing the CEO of a Lehman Brothers-like investment bank caught in the throes of the 2008 financial meltdown.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Joanne King was born in Dublin in 1983. She is best known for her roles on TV’s “Casualty” and “The Tudors”. Her films include “Massive” in 2008.
“Mirror” article:
As Casualty’s sexy new paramedic, she’s setting millions of male pulses racing every Saturday night. But if actress Joanne King hadn’t managed to sneak off for the audition during her lunch break, life could have been very different. Joanne was working part time as a #10-an-hour tour guide at the BBC when she cheekily stole her chance to nip away. “It was a bit of a rush and I had to quickly dash back because I was leading a tour in the afternoon,” says the 23-year-old. “But I remember my agent calling me a few days later and saying, ‘I’m really sorry but you’ve got to pack your bags and move to Bristol.’ So it was worth the effort.” She can’t quite believe it now but, just a few months ago, she was about to give up her acting dream. After two years of scrimping and saving in London, desperately trying to get her big break in the theatre, Dublin-born Joanne was beginning to wonder if she should have followed her mum’s advice and gone to university. But then she received the phone call which would change her life. Within a week she had left her dingy London flat and was filming her first scenes for the Bristol-based hit BBC1 medical drama. “It all happened so fast I didn’t have time to think about it,” she says in her gentle Irish lilt. “I was honestly starting to think that my mum was right. I should have gone to university and got a proper job. “Life was hard. I moved to London determined to become a successful actress but it’s not that simple and I had so many jobs just to get by. “I was sweeping up hair at a hairdresser’s, packing bags at a supermarket and working nights at a pub in North London. “I was sharing a flat with a friend and we had to get out in a hurry because we couldn’t afford the rent. London has so much to offer young people but I couldn’t be part of that because I had no money. Every penny counted. “I really didn’t think it was worth the heartache anymore. All I wanted was to act but it’s tough and I’ve done some ridiculous jobs to see me through.” When she heard she’d won the part of paramedic Cyd Pyke, Joanne was about to start a new job dressing up as a fairy for children’s parties. “Can you imagine?” she laughs. “I was due to start training to be a fairy when Casualty came up. It was all a bit mad.” Joanne can afford to splash out on the odd designer outfit now, but you’re more likely to find the thrifty actress rummaging around charity shops. She remembers how miserable life on the breadline was and still lives on a strict budget. “I love a bargain,” she says. “When something’s half-price I get all excited about it. I like vintage clothes and get a lot from secondhand shops.
“Moneywise, things are more stable for me now but I’m not at the stage where I can go out and buy a Hollywood mansion. “I don’t live a glamorous lifestyle. I’m more at home in my trackies than I am getting dressed up. When I’m off work I don’t bother wearing any make-up. Maybe I should start making more of an effort now I’m on TV.” Although she’s been on our screens since September, it’s only now that Joanne is getting her teeth into a meaty storyline, finding herself at the centre of a lesbian love triangle. Millions of viewers have watched Cyd’s developing romance with hospital hunk Greg Fallon, played by Aussie Kip Gamblin. Unbeknown to Cyd, her best friend Kathleen “Dixie” Dixon, is in love with her and wracked with jealousy over her relationship with Greg. Tonight viewers will see Dixie try to sabotage the couple’s affair. Joanne says: “Cyd’s totally oblivious to Dixie’s feelings but I think Greg’s starting to cotton on to it now. When I started on the show I had no idea I’d be caught up in a lesbian storyline but it’s been a nice little challenge.”
One “challenge” most women would relish would be having to snog gorgeous ex-Home And Away actor Kip on a daily basis. But, surprisingly, Joanne isn’t too keen. “It’s weird kissing him because I remember him from that show,” she smiles. “Kissing him for the first time was scary with the crew there. All these people standing around, watching you kiss. “Luckily I get on really well with Kip and I know his wife and kids so that’s helped put me at ease. But I’ve been told that love scenes never get any easier. My first day on set is a blur now. I was so nervous. But the cast are so lovely they made me feel really welcome and I’m one of the family now. We have a great craic.” The second of four children, Joanne grew up in Dublin with her accountant father Ronan and volunteer teacher mum Adele. Although she has settled easily in both London and now Bristol, her heart remains firmly in Ireland. “I don’t get home often enough,” she says. “I love it back in Dublin. We have the most beautiful theatres and wonderful people. I love going back.” She might boast a perfect figure and model looks but Joanne is currently single – and happily so. I’m not prepared to just settle for Mr OK,” she adds. “He has to be Mr Right. “I prefer my men to be a bit scruffy – I’m not into the clean-cut look. But talent is very sexy as well. “Kelly Jones from the Stereophonics is gorgeous and I think James McAvoy is lovely, but he’s already been snapped up. Mind you, a relationship with another actor could be a recipe for disaster. It’d be very dramatic. “I’m happy being single for now but I’d love to settle down one day and have a big Irish family.” Regular yoga sessions help keep Joanne in trim and she makes sure she eats healthily. And she insists she won’t get sucked into the size zero brigade. “It’s a horror story, a very worrying trend,” she says. “We need to wake up and take responsibility. People are suffering with eating disorders because of it. Personally, I like good food and lots of it. I don’t believe in denying yourself treats. I hate the gym but yoga is brilliant. It’s part of me.” Joanne is staying tight-lipped about how long she plans to stick around in Casualty. But she makes no secret of her ambitions to move into films and follow in the footsteps of another ex-Casualty star. “Kate Winslet is my inspiration,” says Joanne. “She started out in an episode of Casualty so who knows? I think she’s a great actress and has picked her jobs so well. I’d love to have a crack at America. “But my first love will always be theatre and it would break my heart not to go back to that sometime. “Casualty is an amazing training ground and I’m so grateful. But I’ll finish my storylines and then probably say goodbye to Cyd.”
CASUALTY is on BBC1 tonight at 8.35pm.
The above “Mirror” article cn also be accessed online here.
Irish actor Bosco Hogan was born in 1949. His film debut was in 1974 in John Boorman’s “Zardoz” which was lensed in Ireland. Came to prominence in 1977 for his role as Stephen Dedalus in the film of James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. Other films include “Miss Morison’s Ghosts” with Wendy Hiller in 1981, as Robert Emmett in”Anne Devlin” with Brid Brennan and “Taffin” with Pierce Brosnan. He has recently been in the television series “The Tudors”.
“The Agency” page:
Bosco Hogan began his acting career with the RTE Radio Repertory Company before joining the Abbey Theatre for a four-year stay. He has played characters in everything from Miller’s The Crucible to Strindberg and the classic work of Shakespeare, and he has worked under the direction of talents such as Garry Hynes, Joe Dowling and Patrick Mason among others in a career which spans over thirty-five years. His Abbey appearances include The Doll’s House and A Cry From Heaven. Bosco has toured London, continental Europe and the U.S. with his one-man show, I Am Ireland, in which he presents a magnificent portrayal of W.B. Yeats. He has also toured with b*spoke Theatre Company’s production of Tom Murphy’s The Sanctuary Lamp. London stage roles include: Edmund in King Lear, Delio in The Duchess of Malfi and Richard Greatham in Hay Fever.
His skills on the stage brought him into the fields of film and television. In film he has worked on a number of successful films including; John Boorman’s The General, Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur, Bruce Beresford’s Evelyn and Jim Sheridan’s In The Name Of The Father among others. His many appearances on British television include; Count Dracula, Sense and Sensibility, A Taste For Death, Love Lies Bleeding, Act Of Betrayal, The Rockingham Shoot, A Question of Guilt, Prince Regent, and The Chief. He played Dr. Michael Ryan in Ballykissangel and Detective Inspector Gerry Cody in RTE’s DDU.
Bosco has recently appeared as Cardinal Piccolomini in Neil Jordan’s The Borgias, as Prof. John Knowland in the BBC’s Vexed, as well as in Titanic: Blood and Steel. He performed in My Cousin Rachel at the Gate Theatre in the role of Mr. Seecombe, and the role of Tarpey at the Abbey Theatre’s production of Tom Murphy’s The House. Bosco also performed in The Picture of Dorian Gray at the Abbey in 2012, before again appearing as Mr. Seecombe in My Cousin Rachel, which returned to the Gate stage last Christmas due to popular demand. 2013 has seen Bosco cast in The Gate Theatre’s production of Mrs. Warren’s Profession directed by Patrick Mason, Stailc 1913 a T.V documentary to be directed by Brian Gray, An Enemy Of The People directed by Wayne Jordan, and A Streetcar Named Desire at the Gate theatre to be directed by Ethan McSweeny.
Bosco recently finished up on Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, directed by Wayne Jordan at the Abbey Theatre with musical direction by Cathal Synnott. So far 2014 has seen Bosco cast in the revival of the Gate Theatre’s production of My Cousin Rachel, to be directed by Toby Frow and performed at the Spoleto Festival, USA, and performing in The Irish Orchestra’s production of My Brother Peter to be directed by Patrick Mason.
Bosco is based in Dublin.
The above “The Agency” page can also be accessed online here.
Dominique McElligott is an Irish actress who made her acting debut in the television series “On Home Ground” in 2001. Her movies include “Whiskey Echo” in 2005, “Satellites and Meteorites” in 2007 and “Hell on Wheels” in 2011.
“Collider” interview by Christina Radish:
On the new AMC Western series Hell on Wheels, Irish actress Dominique McElligott plays Lily Bell, a newly widowed woman trying to survive in a man’s world. After the death of her husband, Lily has the desire to fulfill her husband’s dream, which ultimately becomes her own dream, as she slowly gains respect in a world where even the toughest of men would fail.
During this exclusive interview with Collider, Dominique McElligott talked about doing her first American television series, how the authenticity and complexity of Hell on Wheels really appealed to her, that she loves playing the strong outsider on an emotional journey, that the average lifespan for the real women who arrived in Hell on Wheels (what they called the traveling town that serviced the construction of the first transcontinental railroad) was only 17 months, and how the challenge of working out in the elements while weighted down by the costumes and covered with mosquito bites only adds to her performance. Check out what she had to say after the jump:
Question: How did you come to this show? Were you looking to do American television?
DOMINIQUE McELLIGOTT: I hadn’t done any work in America. I’m from Ireland. It was very serendipitous. Ironically enough, I was doing a Western in Bolivia, and my manager, who was an American woman that I met in London, was bugging me to come over to L.A. and I didn’t want to. I was hanging out in London, just back from this Western I did in Bolivia, and I was having drinks with friends who are all flight attendants, and they said that they would get me over to America for free, and I could stay and do some meetings and auditions. Hell on Wheels was the first one. I arrived on the 5th of July, and the Hell on Wheels audition was on the 6th or the 7th. It was crazy! They didn’t know me, at all.
Obviously, I loved the pilot and I loved the character, but I didn’t anticipate ever actually getting the chance to do it. When you go up for these brilliant parts, you just figure, “Okay, well, they’re going to pick some American actress, and that will be that.” But, the opportunity was there, and I really enjoyed the audition. It was fun. Actually, I did do an American pilot, but it wasn’t shot in America, it was shot in South Africa. It was called The Philanthropist, and it was for NBC. But, my character was cut out of it. One of the writing producers didn’t see a future for my character, so it was bye-bye me, and I packed my suitcases and went home. It’s always touch-and-go. You never know what’s going to happen to a show. We just had a lot of wishes and hopes that this would turn out because we’re very fond of it.
What do you think makes this Western different from Deadwood?
I know that comparisons are being made between Deadwood and Hell on Wheels, and having watched Deadwood, I think that the comparisons are going to stop, after a couple of episodes, and the show is going to be seen to be so much more than a Western. It’s so much more than that. You don’t get the diversity of characters in a Western that you get in this show. The authenticity of it, and the fact that it’s not stylized like the Westerns are, makes it much more complex. There are social issues being dealt with. There is such a diversity of characters that you wonder, “How are these people going to relate to each other? How are they going to converse?” There’s going to be conflict. There’s going to be a lot of tension. How is that going to be resolved? What’s the interaction like? Basically, it’s a question of survival, and who’s going to survive and who’s going to die. It’s so much more than just a Western.
What was it about this woman that you felt you could identify with?
McELLIGOTT: I love that she’s an outsider. I love that she’s from this alien place, in comparison to where she ends up, in Hell on Wheels. She is bridging the gap between these two worlds that are so different from each other. She’s lost, and she’s trying to find out where she belongs, and form a place for herself. I really love that, and I love her strength. I like playing strong characters, where there’s somewhere to go. She has a lot to work with. The emotional magnitude of it is just enormous. When I was doing some of Lily’s scenes, more so than any other shoot or character, because of the elements and the grittiness and the authenticity of the show, I found it so draining, emotionally, physically and mentally. I would go home with 42 mosquito bites, just weighed down by 100 pounds of clothes and corseted. It’s just crazy, how these women survived. Well, they didn’t. I read that the average lifespan for a woman, when she arrived at Hell on Wheels, was 17 months. That’s how long they lasted. They would die because of the elements and all the things they had to cope with. That gives you an idea of how gritty it was. To go there emotionally is quite a challenge.
How does the pain and suffering that Lily goes through in the pilot affect who she is, for the rest of the series?
McELLIGOTT: She certainly goes on a journey. You’ll see. It jumps back. You don’t see much of her history and background in the pilot. She’s the Englishwoman, and you’re speculating that she’s not from there and that she’s out on her own with her husband, but it will go back and you’ll be given a flavor of where she is and what she decides. The pain and suffering that she goes through is the beginning of her developing a stoicism, in terms of what she’s used to and what she has to deal with. She becomes immune to it, to a certain extent. In a lot of ways, she’s the audience, who acts as the introduction to this world because she also is the outsider. I really like that. That’s her job, and you get to see her survive, under those circumstances.
Does she have much interaction with the other characters, throughout the season?
McELLIGOTT: She does, absolutely. She is feisty and fiery. She doesn’t make friends too easily. That’s the same with all the characters. Elam (Common) and Cullen’s (Anson Mount) story is a fantastic storyline, with how they relate to each other and how they develop a rapport. Lily will interact with everybody, and some relationships are good and some are bad.
Once you were cast, did you do any research into this time period, or does being in the environment with the sets and the wardrobe help?
McELLIGOTT: Both are a help. The costumes absolutely help. You go straight there, when you put on 100 pounds of clothing. I also watched a documentary that I was given about the transcontinental railroad and the building of it. I asked the brothers (Joe and Tony Gayton) a lot of questions. They’re very knowledgeable. They worked on the pilot for three years, so they knew everything and they were able to tell me a lot of stuff. The more I stayed with it, the more interested I got. It was really fascinating. The whole industry of it and just the work that went into it and the people that surrounded the building of it was absolutely fascinating.
Has it been a collaborative process, in developing this character?
McELLIGOTT: They were 100% responsible for Lily. They’re fantastic, talented, gifted writers. I love it. I don’t know how they do it, but they wrote the character. I cannot take credit for Lily. I can take credit for the performance, but they’re the writers. If I have freedom to experiment with a scene, then I try my best to do that. With TV and with the variety of directors you have on a season, you rarely get that opportunity. It’s more structured.
What’s it been like to shoot this in Calgary, Canada?
McELLIGOTT: I miss L.A. because of the weather. It can change so much in Calgary. You can get a storm one minute, and then the sun will come out and it will be hot. We’ll have wet suits on under our clothes when it’s raining, and then we have to go bare-legged when the sun comes up because we’re so hot. That can happen in the space of a day, in just a couple of hours.
Does being that far away from home help you, in terms of the character?
McELLIGOTT: It is a help, in one regard, but it’s also a distraction, in another regard. If you’re so hot that you can’t concentrate, or you’re getting bitten by mosquitos in the middle of a scene and you just want to scratch, that can be distracting, but you’ve got to roll with it. It’s that type of show. If it adds to the authenticity and the look and the grittiness of what the show should be, then I’m happy. Anything for the art, right?
What has this cast been like to work with?
McELLIGOTT: Everyone is great, and really super-talented. Anson [Mount], Colm [Meaney] and Robin McLeavy are wonderful actors. We’re just so lucky. They’re very focused and passionate. The characters are so well-developed and multi-faceted that it just makes our job so easy. I haven’t really had that many scenes with Common yet, so I hope I have a chance to do more with him. He has a fantastic character and storyline, and he’s a wonderful actor and guy.
As an actor, is it fun for you to explore a character over a longer period of time, with different directors, who all have their own vision?
McELLIGOTT: It depends. Each director has their own style, so it’s a compromise, in terms of what your vision for a character is and their vision for the scene. You meet half-way and just find some common ground. Every director is different, but the insights from new people on set give you a different opinion and perspective, which is always embraced, in some way.
What’s been the most fun thing about exploring this character and being a part of this show, and what has been the most challenging aspect of it?
McELLIGOTT: The elements have been the most challenging, and just having to work in them. We’re in studio maybe two days for each episode. Just being outside, filming on a reservation, is the most challenging. The most fun part for an actor is the writing and the story and the character. That’s very fulfilling. Outside of that, the people that are on the show are just a joy and a pleasure to work with because everyone is so passionate and enthusiastic.
What initially attracted you to acting? Was it something you always knew you wanted to do?
McELLIGOTT: Yeah, from a very young age. I distinctly remember watching Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot, and my parents were discussing the fact that he’s an actor. To me, it was a foreign concept. I was like, “Someone is pretending to do that? That’s so awesome!” After that, it just stayed in the back of my mind. I started doing drama after school, and it just developed into something that I did and I enjoyed, very much. Read more at http://collider.com/dominique-mcelligott-hell-on-wheels-interview/#IfUtu0tI6fTzyfrk.99
Shane Briant was born in London in 1946. He studied law at Trinity College in Dublin and made his acting debut in the city’s Eblana Theatre in “Hamlet”. In 1973 he signed a contract with Elstree Studios in London and made “Straight On Till Morning” with Tom Bell and Rita Tushingham and “Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell” amongst others. In more recent years his film work has been in New Zealand and Australia where he now lives. He is also a successful novelist.
IMDB entry:
Born in London, Shane Briant topped the Law School at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Nominated by the London theatre critics as “Best Newcomer” in 1971, Briant has appeared in 32 features worldwide, most notably The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), The Naked Civil Servant (1975), The Lighthorsemen (1987), John Huston‘s The MacKintosh Man (1973) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981). He is also a novelist, having had five books published in Australia: “The Webber Agenda”, “The Chasen Catalyst”, “Hitkids”, “Bite of the Lotus” and his new best-selling thriller, “Graphic”, which came out in 2005. The short film he wrote in 2005, A Message from Fallujah (2005), won “Best in the Fest” at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, and many other awards. He lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and cats. (sbriant@bigpond.net.au)
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Wendy Lycett
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Shane Briant obituary in The Times in 2021.
Stalwart of Hammer horror films such as Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell who played his roles with unnerving sincerity
The Times
Shane Briant, left, with Peter Cushing and David Prowse in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, his final Hammer film
ALAMY
Shane Briant gave filmgoers a fright by doing something that his older Hammer colleagues rarely thought to do: he took his roles seriously. Eschewing the booming cackles of Christopher Lee, he opted for a more unnerving sincerity, specialising in ethereal, ingenuous young men, driven to villainy more by madness than malice. For all the plastic and fur in which the costume department clad its monsters, none looked scarier than the ill intent lurking in Briant’s pouting lips and doe eyes.
In Demons of the Mind (1972) he played Emil, a young man whose father has imprisoned him for fear he would succumb to a hereditary insanity. Having escaped, he deliriously terrorises the townsfolk, particularly the women. Asked by a friend what his work for Hammer involved, he put on his poker face and replied, “I have to run after gorgeous girls, wrestle them to the ground, tear off their flimsy blouses and strangle them.” “My god,” said his friend, “that’s what you do every day?” “More or less,” he shrugged.
He played the boyfriend of a woman who does not realise he is a psychopath in Straight on Till Morning (1972), while in his final Hammer film, Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1974), he uncharacteristically played the hero, a young surgeon called Simon Helder, trapped in a prison, who realises that Victor Frankenstein is building a monster out of his dead inmates.
Briant and Yvonne Mitchell in Demons of the Mind (1972)
ALAMY
One day on set, the Monster from Hell, played by the future Darth Vader actor David Prowse (obituary, November 30, 2020), lumbered up and asked if he liked its costume. “I looked at him from head to toe,” Briant recalled, “it looked like a hairy plastic Halloween suit. I looked at the feet. They were huge, gross, and very ugly, almost deformed. At least the feet were good, I thought to myself. I told him so.”
There was a long pause, after which Prowse replied: “The feet are my own.”
Shane Briant was born in London in 1946, the younger son of Elizabeth (née Nolan), a journalist whose career as an actress had been curtailed by the Second World War, and Keith, an author and poet who, after the war, became a public relations officer for the army on the Rhine. When Shane was a small boy the family lived in Bad Oeynhausen, a spa town in northern Germany, and for a time German was his first language. “Speak English, Shane!” his father would demand. He got what he requested when, having beckoned Shane down from his room to show him off at a cocktail party, Shane spoke his first words in English: “Vot you vont?”
He was five when the family returned to London, where they lived in an apartment overlooking Kew Gardens. Unlike his brother Dermot, a precocious if morose 11-year-old who would decorate his room with quotations from Nietzsche, Shane was “an average kid who wanted to play the guitar”. As his years at Haileybury and Imperial Service College drew to a close, he sensed that he should abandon hopes of university and find a job to support his mother, who suffered from depression. His father had died when he was 16.
With Rita Tushingham in Straight on Till Morning (1972)
ALAMY
Yet his university dream was revived by the generosity of his mother’s friend, a woman called Kit Adeane who provided the funds for him to take a place at Trinity College Dublin, to study law. In his final school report the headmaster wrote “he has the air of a dilettante. He will not get far.” “Let’s see how far I get,” Briant remembered thinking. He joined the Trinity Players and a director who had seen him perform recommended him to play Hamlet in a TV series,Shakespeare for Schools, which led to him playing the role at the Eblana Theatre in Dublin. He performed with such poignancy that one audience member was heard to cry, “Oh Jeez, don’t die Hamlet, don’t feckin’ die!”
Briant caught the eye of the director Vincent Dowling, who was staging a work of grand guignol called Children of the Wolf, and wanted him to take the role of Robin, a brain-damaged youth who stabs his mother to death. It was then that the door to the Hammer mansion creaked open. After his time there he took the titular role in a 1973 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray for ABC, and could perhaps have sprung into a career in Hollywood, but chose instead to remain in Britain where, on a Battersea tennis court, he met his wife, Wendy Lycett, with whom he emigrated to Australia in 1982. Living in Sydney, he did much work for Australian and Kiwi television, as well as writing eight novels.
In 2011 he published an autobiography, Always the Bad Guy, in which he wrote: “I’ve been cast as dangerous people all my life, and I’ve always been happiest playing them. On the odd occasions I’ve played good guys, I’ve had to dig deep into my imagination . . . does this suggest that I am at heart a bad person? I hope not. I consider myself a pussycat at heart.”
Shane Briant, actor, was born on August 17, 1946. He died after a long illness on May 27, 2021, aged 74
Brendan O’Carroll was born in 1955 in Dublin. He has written several books, one of which “Agnes Browne” was made into a film directed by and starring Anjelica Huston. He was featured in the film. He is currently starring in the hughly successful television series “Mrs Brown’s Boys”.
Born at the tail end of the Second World War in 1944, Bronwyn took her mother’s original maiden name “Fitzsimons” and spent the early years of her life in Los Angeles.
In 1953 her mother divorced her father William Houston Price, the American film director. Reportedly the marriage had been on the rocks for years but O’Hara was mindful of the church’s teachings on divorce.
Bronwyn Fitzsimons
She followed her parents into the tough and glamorous world of Hollywood but found that she was never able to escape from her mother’s shadow. She was cast in films “Spencer’s Mountain” and “The Ravagers”. She also starred in a number of TV roles.
In 1968 she married and two years later she gave birth to a son, Conor, who would also follow her into the film industry.
In her 40s she was involved in a car accident that plagued her with pain for many years to come.
Her mother purchased a home in Glengarriff, Cork in 1970 and as the years wore on the pair began to spend increasingly lengthy amounts of time there. The five bedroom property had 35 acres of grounds attached to it and Bronwyn made a number of friends in the local area – even running a small cafe in the town for a while.
In October 2014 her mother announced she was saying goodbye to Ireland and moving to Idaho where her Conor and his two children had made a life for themselves. It was the beginning of the end for the O’Hara/Fitzsimons clan’s association with West Cork and Maureen passed away the following October.
In May 2016 – barely seven months since her mother’s death – Bronwyn was found dead at the Glengarriff house at the age of 71.
Ingrid Craigie was born in Dublin. She is a profilic stage actress and acted on Broadway in Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa” in 1990. She played Ennie Mackie in “The Ballroom of Romance” in 1982 and starred opposite Martin Sheen in “Da” in 1988.
Ciara Dwyer’s interview in “Independent.ie”:
As I cycle down the quays on my way to meet the actress Ingrid Craigie, I spot her ahead of me. It’s her jaunty walk I recognise first, and then her incredibly trim girlish figure. It exudes a sparky energy, as if she is up for life and laughs. And indeed she is.”I was a mistake,” she tells me. “My mother will be laughing but she told me that I was. I threatened her that I could be in therapy for years over this.” Her green eyes glint, utterly devoid of angst. “I shot into the world and I came in happy. I’m basically optimistic. I think life gets harder as you get older but my underlying base is I did come into the world in a good way and into a loving family.”
Craigie is cheerful about her life and her work. On Wednesday, she will be back at the Gate reprising her role of Grace in Brian Friel‘s Faith Healer.
For many years I have been mesmerised by Craigie’s talent. She can do comedy (Coward, Mamet), she was the fragile cripple Laura in Tennessee Williams‘s The Glass Menagerie. But she does passion too. In Terence Rattigan‘s The Deep Blue Sea, she was spellbinding. In Billy Roche’s Poor Beast in the Rain, she played the village tart in a mini almost up to her crotch, with an attitude to match. Her performance in Faith Healer was breathtaking in its heartache.
“I first saw it with Donal McCann,” she says. “I saw it three times. It’s been my favourite play ever since. I think it’s an extraordinary piece of work. I was quite young when I saw it but I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I remember coming out of it shaking because you give so much energy to a play like that as an audience.”
The play is comprised of monologues. Faith healer Frank Hardy tells his story, then his manager Teddy gives his version, as does his partner Grace. It is an unsettling play, but powerful in its honesty about human suffering. “Grace is in deep crisis and I think she’s desperately trying to stay alive,” says Craigie. “She has an all-consuming love for Frank that is quite unhealthy, but she’s also got resilience.”
The first time Craigie played in Faith Healer was at the Gate in 2006 whenRalph Fiennes was Frank Hardy. The play was booked out before they opened and Ingrid, while appreciative of the packed houses, looked on the circus of Fiennes‘s fans with amusement.
“One night the three of us went out for dinner and as we came out of the restaurant a woman saw Ralph and said ‘yum, yum’. It was extraordinary.”
She was disappointed that she was not able to go to Broadway with the production — due to various complications including American equity demands — but she did not dwell on it. When she did the role again last year with Owen Roe and Kim Durham, it was another production and she relished it. She is not the sort of person who lets disappointment blight her life and her optimism stems from a happy childhood.
Ingrid was born in Cork but her family moved to Dublin when she was one. Her father George was in the Army, in the bomb disposal unit. He was a colonel, and she describes him as “an honourable man”. She has one older brother. They lived in Swords and then they moved to Finglas, where she grew up. Her grandfather founded Merville dairy in Finglas, which was later to become Premier dairies. When her grandfather died, her family lived in his house.
“When I was about six I thought I’ll be a colonel in the Army because that’s what my father was. He said, ‘Well, there are no girls in the Army at the moment’, so I thought that career had gone. He would never have said you can’t do that.”
Ingrid went to Alexandra College, which at that stage was in Earlsfort Terrace. “It was a Church of Ireland liberal school, academic and we had great teachers. I loved languages. We had a drama teacher Nora Lever and she was an actor. She had her own drama company and she used to put on Shakespeare for schools. One day she said to me, ‘you can be an actor’. That was fantastic. I didn’t know how to do that. Although my mother is a great singer and has a very outgoing personality I didn’t have any family background in acting. I used to do assistant stage manager for Nora and played the maid in her productions. I started going to the theatre with friends. I remember making my parents bring me to see Borstal Boy at the Abbey and being blown away by that and realising then how theatre is not just entertainment. It’s like reading a novel and it opens up other worlds to you.”
In school, it was always assumed that Ingrid would go to university. She studied English at Trinity and got involved in Players. As a schoolgirl, she had seen many productions there. While in her final year at Trinity, she was involved in the Abbey, doing walk-on parts. Then she finished college and plunged into the Abbey. Eventually the roles got bigger. She admired Sorcha Cusack and Dearbhla Molloy and acted alongside greats such as Joan O’Hara. Tomas MacAnna was in charge at the time and he was very paternal, looking out for her, helping her get a few bob and telling her that she was understudying all the female roles.
“I was dying to go on,” she says. Her first big role was in Thornton Wilder‘s Our Town, alongside Stephen Brennan, and on and on she went. Her mother Betty was worried that the acting life would be an unstable one, but Ingrid was determined.
“I was a feminist from an early age. I always wanted to be independent. I think I got that from my mother. She should have been a working woman, in the sense of having a career, but when she was growing up it was a different time. She was very bright and she wanted to be a chemist and her father said, ‘You don’t want to do that because you’ll get married’. That was the way it was, unless you were incredibly determined or rebellious.
“My mother did a lot of voluntary work for the Multiple Sclerosis society but she was never paid. She could have done loads of things. She could have run businesses and would have been a fantastic agent. I think I saw that and I thought I’m not going to be stopped doing something. I always wanted to be able to look after myself and not to be dependent on a man. Not that she was dependent on my father. It was never like that.”
While acting, Ingrid worked alongside Ray McAnally and Cyril Cusack, both were generous in passing on invaluable tips in stagecraft. Cyril became a great friend, and it was while having dinner with him and some friends that she met his son, Paul, who went on to become her partner. They were together for 20 years.
“Although I was always independent in the relationship, when that broke up, my life became very different. It wasn’t going to be the two of you, with one person with a solid pension and an income. All of a sudden I was in my late 40s and it was just me.”
Were they ever going to get married and have kids? Or was that not the plan? “It wasn’t that it wasn’t the plan. I never said I won’t. It was just one of those things that didn’t happen for various reasons. Our relationship finished. I think it’s very sad when people have been in a long relationship and look back and think what a wasted life. I feel very fortunate to have been with someone who is worth loving. He is a wonderful person and he and his wife Elma are very good friends of mine. (They married nine years ago.) I adore them both. I would do anything for them and they would do anything for me.”
But don’t people think this odd? “People have fixed ideas but how can you think that way? Otherwise I chose someone really stupid to love for a long time and he would have been the same. I think we make choices about how we respond to things sometimes. I think it’s a danger when relationships break up that people want to take sides. People want to blame somebody and in the beginning they were very shocked that we got on so well. But there’s no reason for us not to get on well.
“We’re both very fortunate and both very happy with other people. I’m still very close to the family. Sorcha (Paul’s sister) is a very good friend of mine, so that’s why Beth, her daughter, comes to stay with me when she is in a play here, as does her half-sister Catherine Cusack.
“We didn’t have a bitter break-up. We can all choose to dwell on things but I don’t know what good it does you. You can make choices about how you want to live. I think all relationships go through phases and sometimes you have to negotiate how you are, the balances change all the time. I was at their wedding. I think that’s great. That’s added to my life. I’m not losing them as friends and we’ve friends in common as well.”
But Ingrid has reasons of her own to be cheerful. Some years ago, she was inMontreal doing The Weir when she met a Canadian actor and director, Wayne Burnett.
“I wasn’t looking to be in a relationship with anyone. But when I met Wayne I thought this is a very nice man and he is going to be a friend of mine whether he likes it or not. He was interesting and intelligent and funny and thoughtful. I love the fact that he trained once as a therapist — he didn’t do the final bit — but he’s a great man for talking about things endlessly and a lot of men don’t like talking about anything. We talk on the phone every night. I see him as much as I can. I go to him or he comes to me.
“I think it’s difficult for a relationship to last long-distance if you’re young — someone is going to meet someone else and you’re going to mess it up somehow — but because we were older when we met I think we knew what we wanted and then we made that commitment.
“It’s fantastic to meet someone when you don’t quite expect it. Also the odd thing is, it’s a bit like we’re on holiday when we’re together. At the moment, I live here and he lives there.
“He’s a lovely man and I love him. He’s got the most beautiful brown eyes and the most beautiful face. He has a beard and he’s balding, he hates being bald. He’s just … Well…” She sighs dreamily.
I urge her to rig up Skype for the nightly calls, to save the money on the phone cards.
“I know… I must … But then I’d have to be smartened up,” she says, thinking of the video calls. It wouldn’t matter a jot if she were in tracksuit bottoms. As she talks of him her green eyes shimmer. I’m sure he’d enjoy her lovely glow.
The above “Independent.ie” interview can also be accessed online here.
Niall Buggy was born in 1948 in Dublin. His film debut was in the John Boorman movie, made on location in Ireland, “Zardoz” in 1974 with Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling. Other movies include “Philadelphia, Here I Come”, “The Purple Taxi” with Fred Astaire, “The Playboys” in 1992 and as Father Alex in “Mamma Mia”. He has had an extensive career also in the theatre.
Niall Buggy
“Lisa Richard’s Agency” page:
Niall Buggy is one of the leading Irish actors of his generation who has worked extensively on the stage and screen in Ireland, the UK and the US. Some of his better known roles include the lead in Brian Friel’s, Uncle Vanya, for which he won Best Actor in the Irish Times Theatre Awards and his role in Aristrocrats for which he won a number of awards including the Time Out Award, Obie Award in New York, Drama Desk Award and a Clarence Derwent Award. He was also awarded the Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance in Dead Funny. His performance in Juno and the Paycock won him Best Actor in the Regional Theatre Awards. Niall has appeared in films such as Mamma Mia, Casanova, The Butcher Boy, Alien 3 and The Playboys. Some of his television credits include; Inspector Lewis, Dalziel and Pascoe, Father Ted, The Bill and The Professionals. Niall recently appeared in Jack Taylor 3 for Taylor Made Films Ltd and finished a tour of Ireland on stage in Druid’s Tom Murphy Season. Niall will be appearing in Mike Leigh’s next film ‘Turner’ to be released in 2014.
The above Lisa Richard’s Agency page can also be accessed online here.
Irish born actress Peggy Marshall made her film debut in 1955 in “Tim Driscoll’s Donkey”. Her other films include “Woman of Straw” with Gina Lollobrigida, “The Fighting Prince of Donegal” with Peter McEnery and “The Jigsaw Man” in 1984.
Albert Sharpe was born in Belfast in 1985. He created the role of Finian McLonergan in “Finian’s Rainbow” on Broadway. His films include “I See A Dark Stranger” with Deborah Kerr in 1946, “Portrait of Jennie” with Jennifer Jones in 1948 and of course his most famous role in “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” in 1959 with Sean Connery and Janet Munro. He died in 1970.
Talented Irish actor, long a member of the famous Abbey Players, but perhaps best known in America for creating the role of Finian McLonergan in the original Broadway production of “Finian’s Rainbow” in 1947 and starring in the title role of Disney’s “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” twelve years later. His last ten years were spent in quiet retirement until his death in 1970 at the age of 85.
Walt Disney had seen him in the Broadway production of “Finian’s Rainbow.” He kept him in mind for the title role in the long delayed “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” which wasn’t made until 1959.
Played many vaudeville houses while touring Europe in a 50-year career, at one time partnering in a comic act with actor Joe Carney.
Attend Christian Brothers School in Belfast and started show business as a boy there selling programs at the Empire theater and as a magician’s assistant.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Dominic West was born in 1969 in Sheffield, Yorkshire. He is well-known for his performance in the hughly popular series U.S. television series “The Wire” as Jimmy McNulty. In 2001 he had been featured in the film “Rock Star”.His other films include “The Mona Lisa Smile”, “28 Days” and “Chicago”.
TCM overview:
Hailing from the stage and screen of his native England, actor Dominic West made a name in the United States playing hard-drinking, anti-authoritarian homicide detective, Jimmy McNulty, on the gritty television crime drama, “The Wire” (HBO, 2002-08). Prior to that critically acclaimed role, West appeared in films like “Richard III” (1995), “Surviving Picasso” (1996) and “The Gambler” (1998). But it was his five years on “The Wire” that perhaps offered him the richest and most compelling performance of his career on a show numerous critics dubbed the greatest series in the history of television. Thanks to the critical adulation heaped upon “The Wire,” West nabbed plumber roles in higher-profile movies like “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003) and “The Forgotten” (2004). He had his first major co-starring role in the blockbuster adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel, “300” (2007), and continued along in that vein with “Punisher: War Zone” (2008) and “Centurion” (2010). Thanks to a ready charm and comedic flair mixed with serious acting chops, West was an extraordinary talent worthy of attention.
Born on Oct. 15, 1969 and raised in a wealthy Catholic home in Sheffield, England, West became involved with acting at an early age, appearing in amateur stage productions as a child alongside his mother and eldest sister. It was while attending Eton College – an independent school for teenage boys – that he fell into the mindset of becoming a professional actor, thanks to the passionate encouragement of drama department head Robert Freedman. West performed in several school productions; most notably as the melancholy lead in “Hamlet.” After graduating Eton, he moved on to Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where he earned his bachelor of arts in literature, before continuing his dramatic training at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. From the time he left Guildhall, West went to work as an actor straight away, honing his trade with London stage work, while landing turns in small British features and supporting parts in larger-scale productions. He made his big screen debut in the Oxford-set drama, “Wavelength” (1995), which he followed with a turn as Richmond in the 1930s-set take on “Richard III” (1995), starring Ian McKellen.
After a small part as the son of Pablo Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) in “Surviving Picasso” (1996), West returned to the stage to star in productions of “Cloud Nine” and “The Seagull” during director Peter Hall’s 1997 season at the Old Vic. That same year, West starred in Hungarian director Karoly Makk’s “The Gambler” (1997), a unique dramatization that intertwined the real life of Fyodor Dostoyevsky with his fiction. In scenes from the novel that were played out on screen, West portrayed a young man who becomes a high roller in a bid to secure the affections of a beautiful woman (Polly Walker). That same year he starred alongside Toni Collette in the romance “Diana & Me” (1997), playing an ambitious British paparazzo involved with an Australian Diana Spencer who shared her name and birthday with the famed Princess of Wales. West’s portrayal of the slimy photographer was nonetheless likeable and human, despite the victimizing nature of his livelihood. He played a photographer again the following year; this time with a cameo in the zany mockumentary on the girl group, the Spice Girls, “Spice World” (1998), but was thankfully left unassociated with the “movie.”
West followed with the pivotal role of Lysander in Michael Hoffman’s star studded adaptation of “William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1999), which increased the actor’s visibility to an American audience in more ways than one. Virtually naked for much of the film and given the unenviable task of nude bicycling, West still capably held his own alongside co-stars Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale, Calista Flockhart and Anna Friel. After the high-profile and rather revealing co-starring role, he landed a rather conventional and uncharacteristic bit part by uttering a single line as a mostly obscure palace guard in the summer blockbuster “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” (1999). While the role was barely noticeable, West considered the opportunity to be in such a monumental film as one not to pass up. Meanwhile, he marked his U.S. television debut as the nephew to Ebenezer Scrooge (Patrick Stewart) in the made-for-cable version of “A Christmas Carol” (TNT, 1999). Returning to the stage once again, West spent five months in the London production of “De La Guarda” (1999).
West’s profile continued to rise in 2000, beginning with his co-starring role in the dramedy, “28 Days,” which followed a New York City writer (Sandra Bullock) through her court-ordered rehab. West played Jasper, the writer’s fun-loving British boyfriend who shared her life of hard partying and forgotten evenings. West followed up the engaging performance playing a rhythm guitarist for popular hard rock band Steel Dragon in the fact-based comedy “Rock Star” (2001), starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston, then got a major career boost when he played Fred Casely, the victim in the ballyhooed murder trial of Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) in director Rob Marshall’s acclaimed film version of the musical “Chicago” (2002). In his first turn on the small screen, West landed the role of a lifetime as one of the stars of David Simon’s gritty crime drama “The Wire” (HBO, 2002-08). Dropping the Queen’s English for a tough Baltimore twang, West played homicide detective Jimmy McNulty, a hard-drinking outsider who revels in bucking authority, sleeping with as many women as possible, and taking down murderers and drug dealers with good old fashioned police work. During the first season of “The Wire,” McNulty joins a joint homicide and narcotics team (Sonja Sohn, Wendell Pierce, Lance Reddick, among others) to take down a notorious drug kingpin (Wood Harris), but discovers that trying to make a difference can lead one to ruin.
Hailed by numerous critics as being the greatest television series of all time, “The Wire” offered West his most richly textured and compelling performances, which spanned the entire five seasons of the show’s run. Subsequent seasons of showed West’s McNulty demoted to the Marine Unit during an investigation of dock workers stealing shipping containers and retuning to walking a beat in uniform while helping to keep four high school students stay on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile, he maintains a riotous camaraderie with fellow hard-drinking, but far more sensible partner, Bunk (Pierce), while routinely making a sordid mess of his personal life, particularly with customs officer Beadie Russell (Amy Ryan). During his run on the show, West continued appearing in films, playing a predatory Italian language professor at an all-girls school who casually sleeps with his students in “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003). Next, he essayed the role of a man told his child never existed, who embarks on a harrowing investigation alongside similarly bereft parent (Julianne Moore) in the critically dismissed paranormal thriller “The Forgotten” (2004).
Returning to features, West had his first major blockbuster role, portraying Theron of Acragas, tyrant of Greek-occupied Sicily, in “300” (2007), a loose telling of the famed Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartan warriors led by King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) inflicted heavy damage to the massive Persian army of Xerxes I (Rodrigo Santoro). Based on the popular graphic novel by Frank Miller, “300” was a big box office hit while having a lasting impact on popular culture, all of which helped West make more of a name for himself. He followed that with a role as an inspector in “Hannibal Rising” (2007), which traced the early years of Hannibal Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) and his transformation from a frightened boy who witnessed his family massacred into a fearsome serial killer. Once “The Wire” wrapped for good in 2008, leaving many hearts empty in front of and behind the cameras, West stayed with features for a while, co-starring as the horribly disfigured crime boss, Jigsaw, in the comic book adaptation, “Punisher: War Zone” (2008). He next starred in director Neil Marshall’s “Centurion” (2010), playing a Roman general who leads the famed Ninth Legion, which was rumored to have disappeared or been completely destroyed in battle.
The year 2011 was a busy one for West who was seen as well as heard in theaters with supporting roles in the slapstick spy-comedy sequel “Johnny English Reborn” (2011) and the animated holiday adventure “Arthur Christmas” (2011). It was, however, on television that the actor once again achieved his greatest success. West gave a chilling performance as notorious U.K. serial killer Fred West in the British docudrama miniseries “Appropriate Adult” (ITV, 2011). Also that year, he joined the cast of the U.K. series “The Hour” (BBC, 2011), a period political-drama centering on an investigative current affairs program during the time of the Suez Canal crisis. For his role as charismatic anchorman Hector Madden, West earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Miniseries.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Sinead Keenan was born in Dublin in 1977. She is best know for her role as Nina on TV in “Being Human”. She starred first on the Irish television series “Fair City”. Film roles include “On the Nose” in 2001 and “Conspiracy of Silence”.
Max Irons was born 1985. He is the son of Sinead Cusack and Jeremy Irons and the grandson of Cyril Cusack. His films include “Red Riding Hood” in 2011 and the upcoming “Vivaldi”.
Interview with “Independent.ie”:
STEPHEN MILTON – UPDATED 17 JUNE 2013 02:43 PMHowever, the decision to either go with his commanding family name and forever risk association with his Oscar-winning father or adopt a new moniker and start anew posed a dilemma for the fledgling star.”I toyed around with adopting my middle name as my surname,” he says. “It’s Diarmuid, so, I don’t know… it was a thought.”But when I’d introduce myself as ‘Diarmuid’, people would hear ‘Dermot’. I’d correct them and say ‘Diarmuid’, and straight away ‘Dermot’ would come back to me. There was always going to be a problem there.”Irons glances out of the window. The familial connection is a topic he’s finding difficult to escape. I’m not ashamed of it,” he says. “I wouldn’t be the first actor who has famous actor parents. I just want to concentrate on my own work, and hopefully ‘the Jeremy Irons‘ son’ business will become less and less.”That remains to be seen. With a towering 6ft 2in stature and yawning, hollowed cheekbones, he’s unmistakably his father’s son. It’s uncanny.
But there’s a warmth and a brightness in young Irons, inherited from his mother, renowned actress Sinead Cusack. “I’m much more like her,” he says. “From far off you can see my dad, but when you see my face, it’s far more Cusack.”
Prior to today’s meeting, a stern warning was issued from his publicist: only one solitary question about family is permitted.
Sitting opposite the spawn of an Oscar-winner who’s best known for ‘The Mission’, ‘The Lion King‘ and ‘Reversal of Fortune’, and heir to the Cusack dynasty, this poses a problem. It’s a captivating legacy that betrays a flourishing future.
I immediately apologise for running over my allotted quota, but the incredibly likeable star courteously says: “I’ll talk about my family all day long, particularly the Cusacks, and Cyril. I don’t get as much about them.
“It’s when I hear, ‘What’s it like to have Jeremy Irons as your father?’ – what do you say to that? I don’t know, what’s it like having your father as your father?”
Parked in his agent’s office just off London’s Regent Street, all high gloss and mahogany furnishing, the conversation flows with ease while the rain lashes against the window pane on a miserable afternoon.
Having just nipped out for a quick cigarette, the 27-year-old is in chipper mood, periodically smacking his right knee and clapping his hands at the climax of a joke.
He’s as pleasantly responsive as when I interviewed him more than two years ago for fabled flop ‘Red Riding Hood’. Back then, he fielded relentless questions about his clan with an elegant grace, and does the same today while chatting about his challenging role as King Edward IV in the Beeb’s lavish adaptation of ‘The White Queen’, based on Philippa Gregory‘s best-selling novel series ‘The Cousins’ War’.
Set against the backdrop of the War of the Roses, it’s the story of the ongoing conflict for the throne of England between the House of York and the House of Lancaster and focuses on three women in their quest for power: Elizabeth Woodville (Rebecca Ferguson) Margaret Beaufort (Amanda Hale) and Anne Neville (Faye Marsay).
And after largely ‘guy candy’ work in teen fare ‘Red Riding Hood’ and recentSaoirse Ronan sci-fi misfire ‘The Host’, the sumptuous saga offers Irons the opportunity to employ a powerful presence as Edward IV. A deeply complex historical figure, he was a ruler who exercised a balance between nobility and treachery to maintain the crown.
“I fell in love with him,” Max explains. “Opinions are split as to what kind of person he was, whether he was reckless, foolish and irresponsible, while others say he was politically very savvy and militarily, very successful. He was a moderniser and a modern thinker.”
Did this complexity prove an attraction? “That’s what we wanted for the first episode, to quite not nail his initial intentions. To marry Elizabeth, a virtual commoner, was such an unusual thing for him to do, but he was besotted,” he says.
“In those days, love had nothing to do with it; it was simply about alliances. And I guess Edward was a bit of a swine, but a sort of loveable one. He didn’t play by the rules. He did what he did very successfully until the day he died.”
The royal role points the former Burberry model, who recently ended his relationship with ‘Sucker Punch’ beauty Emily Browning, in a more mature direction.
“I got some feedback recently from an audition: ‘Very good, bit too old, not quite pretty enough,'” he grins. “Naturally I was offended, but then you think, maybe I’m getting to a place where I can sort of leave that teen place behind.”
Surely this was that one of the harshest critiques he’s received? “That was quite mild. A friend of mine didn’t get a job because he was told he was too hairy.”
Born and raised in north London, Irons attended the Dragon School in Oxford before winning a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, cultivating a distinctly Anglicised clutch of manners and personality.
He spent his summers at the family’s west Cork abode of Kilcoe Castle – briefly a shade of hot pink during the mid-1990s, “which was only an undercoat”, the actor protests.
These get-togethers with the Cusack clan farmed his Hibernian roots.
“I’m probably not as Irish as I would like to be. I can’t speak the language and God knows I can’t do the accent. I’ve always lived [in London], but my sensibilities are far more like my mother and her side of the family.”
Grandfather Cyril, who starred in ‘Harold and Maude’, ‘My Left Foot’ and ‘Strumpet City’, passed away after a lengthy battle with motor neurone disease when Max was only five. Does he treasure memories of the legendary performer?
“Cyril loved to laugh and had so many stories. And he was proud of all his family, especially watching his daughters following in his footsteps,” he says.
Pride might not necessarily be the word used to describe Max’s feelings for his father’s opinions of late, however.
A man of strong, impulsive words, Irons senior has blithely vented his views on several controversial subjects including same-sex marriage, branding it ‘incestuous’, and claiming he felt sorry for high-profile figures such as ‘Coronation Street‘ actor William Roache, accused of sexual abuse in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal.
“I don’t stand by everything he says, but it’s important that we have people who throw out ideas, if not for us to reject,” says Max. “My father says what he thinks, even if some of it is a little off kilter. But God knows it’s a lot more interesting than just saying what people want to hear constantly. That’s boring.”
His next film is ‘Posh’, a screen adaptation of Laura Wade’s play based on the clandestine movements of the Oxford Bullingdon Club – whose members once included British prime minister David Cameron, chancellor George Osborneand London mayor Boris Johnson – while the actor has several other projects in the offing.
Armed with a deadly combination of Celtic charm and Austen propriety, it’s surely a balance he calls upon in his quest to conquer the heights ofHollywood?
“That would be the ideal,” he chuckles, “being able to bounce between the two. But it’s just the accent really screws me over. I can’t walk into a meeting and say, [in Queen’s English] ‘Hello, I’m Max Irons and I’m Irish’ with this voice; that isn’t going to work.
“The English card gets you quite far over there [in LA]. You think the Irish get the royal treatment, but being British works a treat, too. Turn up the poshness, turn it down to Cockney – just do whatever you need to do to get that part.”
Clapping his hands together, he throws his head back and makes a laboured sigh.
“That’s going to end up as the headline of this piece, isn’t it? I’m really my own worst enemy at the best of times.”
The above “Independent.ie” interview can also be accessed online here.
Catherine Cusack was born in 1968 and is the youngest daughter of the great Irish actor Cyril Cusack. One of her earliest acting roles was with the famed Druid Theatre in Galway. In 1992 she achieved national fame in the UK as Carmel Finnan the nurse stalking Martin Platt in “Coronation Street”. Her films include “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne”, “Conspiracy of Silence” and “Finding Neverland”.
“Independent.ie”:
CIARA DWYER – UPDATED 27 NOVEMBER 2012 03:47 PM
As she utters these lines, Catherine Cusack frowns. It is not in her nature to speak out. It obviously still troubles her slightly. But at 40, she has started to examine her life and see how she is the product of her upbringing.
Right now, the London-born actress has many reasons to be cheerful. She is relishing her role as Goneril in Second Age’s production of King Lear. “It’s great to play a villain.” For so long, because of her innocent face, she was frequently cast in nice, non-threatening roles. Many will remember her from Coronation Street, where she played Carmel, the babysitter who was not as sweet as she seemed. (The character, who was supposed to be from Offaly, had erotomania — a disorder where the subject holds a delusional belief that a person is in love with her.) Some Irish people complained in mock outrage that nobody from Offaly would have erotomania.
Nowadays, Catherine lives in London with her husband Alex Palmer, an English actor whom she met when she played his wife on stage. From the way she speaks of him, it is clear that she is very happy with him. Yet in the time that I spent with her, she talked most about her childhood, her parents and, in particular, her relationship with her late father, the actor Cyril Cusack.
What sort of man was he?
“He was 58 when I was born, so there was a big generation gap, but I think I also had a much more relaxed dad than possibly the others had. (Cyril had five children from his first marriage to the actress Maureen Kiely.) By that stage, he was probably easier to live with.”
This is the pleasing answer, but then Catherine goes on.
“He was a very difficult man. This is only my experience and I do think I had it a bit easier, but he kind of dominated a room. There’d be an atmosphere. I don’t know if he meant to, but he just did. It’s hard to describe how some people do that but he did. It’s something very subtle. As he had grown older and become more established, the world started to revolve around him. But also it was a generation thing. He was a man when men were the centre of everything, the centre of family. I think he was a fantastic actor, a ground-breaking actor. When he was quite famous and successful, he was given that status and respect.”
She was obviously not impressed by his behaviour when he wasn’t working, but I say that he was probably used to having people waiting on him hand and foot when he was in films, so he may have expected the same in real life. Also, many artists often have huge egos, where they are self-consumed. That is their norm.
“Yeah, I agree, but there is something in me which thinks those people should be kept down to earth, they need that.”
It sounds like everyone gave in to Cyril.
“He was moody. I’m not talking shouting or violence and it certainly wasn’t ‘my hell childhood’ but the thing about childhood is that whatever you have is what you’re used to. It’s your normality. He could be a champion sulker. There’d be an atmosphere that would close everything.”
Catherine and her mother, Mary Rose Cunningham, would try to appease him.
“With Dad, you tried to make everything all right and all good, and make it happy. I think some of the others would have had the same experience.”
Did it work?
“Mostly it did, but it took a lot of energy and then that’s how you develop, which isn’t that healthy. I found that a real problem. You can be a rebel, but I never was. I didn’t let myself have a temper. I was totally appeasing and it would have been a lot healthier if I had spoken back, but sometimes Mum would try that and it didn’t work, so that was very frustrating. All that stuff about my wanting to scream and shout probably comes out on stage instead.”
But it was not just a childhood blighted by Cyril’s artistic temperament. Catherine has many fond memories of her father. She remembers when he brought her to her first opera as a little girl — La Boheme — and he got a great laugh out of her reaction to The Mikado.
“A Japanese girl was singing a line, ‘Why am I so ugly?’ and I apparently shouted out — ‘No, you’re not. I think you’re beautiful’, which Dad liked a lot.”
Catherine used to go to mass with her father every Sunday in London, but when he died, she stopped going, as she realised that it meant nothing to her. She remembers when they were in Dublin, how she used to go into the oratory on Leeson Street with him; he would always bless himself when he passed there, or any church. They did Lent in their home.
When Catherine speaks of how her father met her mother, her voice becomes hesitant. Theirs was not an easy beginning and even as an adult, Catherine is only aware of certain details. The story was one which caused much pain. Cyril was married to Maureen when he met Mary Rose, while he was filming in Rome. They began an affair. In some ways, it was a double and somewhat secret life he led. He was publicly a strict Catholic and did not believe in divorce, so he didn’t marry Mary Rose until his first wife had died in 1977, when Catherine was nine.
“It’s pretty common knowledge and I suppose a lot of heart-rending years went by. I don’t actually know if he left his wife and I haven’t actually been told because there was a lot of pain. He couldn’t and wouldn’t marry my mother because he wouldn’t divorce. But all this wasn’t a secret. I think he was sort of between the two families, when he wasn’t away working. I grew up in London. I kind of felt like an only child and I was kind of an only child. By that stage, Sinead and Sorcha (Cusack) were up working, having careers. Later on, Dad introduced me to Niamh. I grew up in west London and I went to a convent school, which was probably Dad’s influence.”
Her mother, Mary Rose, had led a colourful life before she met Cyril. Catherine was her one and only child. She had her when she was 46. (Later, Catherine concedes that this is probably one reason why she is not too worried about her biological clock.)
“I could talk about my mother until the cows come home. We were very close.”
Mary Rose was from Cloncurry, a tiny village in Queensland. (After her mother died, Catherine went on an odyssey to see her mother’s birthplace.) During the Second World War, Mary Rose was a personal assistant to a colonel in the Australian Army. That brought her to Sydney, where she met a touring acting company, which included Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. (She got to know the actress very well and said that she had a filthy vocabulary.) Dan Cunningham, one of the actors, proposed to Mary Rose. She told him to go back to London and, if he felt the same way there, she would join him. She duly did, they married in London, but it ended in divorce. She was working as the head of a company selling cashmere when she fell in love with an Italian count. Off she went to live with him in Rome. Eventually he died of liver cancer, but she stayed on in Rome. By that stage, her ex-husband, Dan was doing a bit of work as an actors’ agent. When Cyril told him that he was going to Rome to do a film, Dan told him he had a friend there and to look her up. And so began the affair. Catherine says that her mother was great fun and very relaxed. She would often encourage her daughter to mitch from school so that the two of them could stay home and watch television. On leaving school, Catherine decided to study drama at university, to see if acting was for her. She had grown up watching her father on stage and observing him learning his lines at home.
“He was in his element when he was acting.” She has fond memories of the production of Shaw’s You Never Can Tell in which he starred. (Years later, she was to be in the play, too.) During her time at university, she got some work as an assistant stage manager at the Tricycle Theatre and some acting came out of that. Soon she was hooked, and, equity card in hand, she left college and pursued acting full time. Her father was extremely proud of her when she played a nun in Agnes of God at Andrew’s Lane Theatre. Another time he saw her in Bold Girls and said, “She’s an actress.”
When Cyril died in 1993, after a long and painful battle with motor neurone disease, the family were with him. “I loved him and when he died I realised how much I loved him. It really took me aback. I’d always felt close to my Mum, but I didn’t always feel that connection with him. There was a sense of relief when he died because the disease was over, but also life was much easier.”
Catherine enjoyed the time with her mother — “We were each other’s world.”
Three years after Cyril’s death, Mary Rose got ovarian cancer for which she was treated. When it came back, she decided to have no further treatment. Catherine was in Sebastian Barry’s play, Our Lady of Sligo, playing Joanie. In the play her character’s mother, who was played by her step-sister, Sinead, was dying of cancer. It was too close to the bone and one day, observing Catherine’s palpable suffering, Sinead told her — “The show doesn’t always have to go on”. They got another actress to take Catherine’s place, so she could be with her dying mother. Mary Rose died in 1998.
“When Mum died, then we all had no parents. At that moment I had to grow up because I don’t think I had. Being Mum’s only child I was very much cocooned. I wasn’t in a bad position financially but suddenly I was alone in the world. It dawns on you that you’re only here for a limited time.”
Catherine still lives in the family home. She and her husband Alex have de-cluttered the house and changed the kitchen so that it feels more like their own place. She and the rest of the Cusack children are very close. She sees Niamh the most, as she lives across the river from her but she is in touch with Padraig, Paul, Sinead and Sorcha, too. Niamh has written a piece for Vogue on her sisters and she has touched on the difference in her relationship with Catherine.
When she is not acting, Catherine often goes rock- climbing with her husband — full-on life threatening stuff with ice axes and crampons.
“We’ve done it mostly in Scotland and it’s amazing when you go up into the hills. It’s stunning, like being on another planet.”
“The first time I went rock- climbing I wanted to hold my own. I remember thinking — I will not be shown to be less. I went with him because I loved him. But then one day, while I was trying to put in an ice axe, terrified that I would fall, I lost it and told him that it was not for me.” And with that sentence, Catherine Cusack stopped being her appeasing self and grew up.
The above “Independent.ie” article can be accessed online here.
Carmel McSharry was born in Dublin in 1930. Her career has been spent mostly in the United Kingdom. She made her television acting debut in 1957 in episodes of “Emergency-Ward 10”. Her other television credits include “Gideon’s Way”, “No Hiding Place”,”Beryl’s Lot” and “The Liver Birds”. Her films include “The Day the Earth Caught Fire”, “The Leather Boys” and “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. Her stage appearances include a revival of “Oliver” with Jim Dale in the London Palladium in the mid 1990’s.
Profile from “Familiar Unknown”:
Of course, Carmel McSharry was born in Ireland, but she has graced a number of classic UK TV shows over the years. With her wary, alert eyes and anxiously disapproving expression, she’s made something of a speciality of the busybody business. She was Carol’s ‘mam’ in the later series of ‘The Liver Birds’ and played Mrs Hollingbery, the endearingly impervious foil to Alf Garnett’s rants in ‘In Sickness And In Health’ after Dandy Nichols passed away. She was in the ’60s Michael Medwin sitcom ‘For The Love Of Mike’, but her big break from playing servants and nosy parkers came in the early ’70s when she starred in ‘Beryl’s Lot’, the popular ITV comedy about a middle-aged housewife who decides to embark on an ambitious course of education and self-improvement. After that she went on to appear in wartime drama ‘Wish Me Luck’ and the usual ‘Ruth Rendell Mysteries’, ‘Casualty’,
In the cinema you could look out for fleeting appearances in ‘ The Leather Boys’ (1964), Hammer horror ‘The Witches’ (1966), and the dreadful but fascinating ‘All Coppers Are…’ (1972).
The above “Familiar Unknown” profile can also be accessed online here.
Noel Purcell was a very popular and well-loved Irish actor who had a very prolific film career over many years. He was born in Dublin in 1900. He acted on the boards of Irish theatre and made his film debut in “Blarney” in 1926. His films included “The Blue Lagoon” in 1949, “Encore” in 1951, “The Seekers”, “Moby Dick”, “Lust for Life”, “Doctor at Large”, “Shake Hands with the Devil”, “Lord Jim” and “Flight of the Doves”. He died in Dublin in 1985.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Noel Purcell was the son of auctioneer Pierce Purcell and his second wife Catherine, née Hoban, of 4 Ashbrook Terrace, South Circular Road, Dublin. He was born on 23 December 1900 and baptised six days later at Harrington Street Church.[1] Within a few months, the Purcell family had moved to 12 Mercer St. Lower.[2] In 1911, the Purcells were living at the same address, but the household was headed by Noel’s maternal grandmother, Julia Hoban, a furniture dealer.
Purcell also gained some recognition as a singer. Shortly after World War II, songwriter Leo Maguire composed “The Dublin Saunter” for him. He performed the song live for many years and later recorded it for the Glenside label. However, the recording was not a hit. As Purcell recalled many years later, “I don’t think one person in the world bought it.” In 1981, he recorded a spoken word version of Pete St. John‘s “Dublin in the Rare Old Times“.[5]
In June 1984, Purcell was given the Freedom of the City of Dublin.[6] Nine months later, he died in his native city at the age of 84.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
TCM Overview:
Noel Purcell was an actor who had a successful Hollywood career. In his early acting career, Purcell appeared in such films as the Stewart Granger historical drama “Captain Boycott” (1947), “Saints and Sinners” (1949) and the romance “The Blue Lagoon” (1949) with Jean Simmons. He also appeared in the adventure “The Crimson Pirate” (1952) with Burt Lancaster and “Grand National Night” (1953). His film career continued throughout the fifties in productions like “Svengali” (1955) with Donald Wolfit, the Gregory Peck dramatic adventure “Moby Dick” (1956) and “Lust For Life” (1956).
Film continued to be his passion as he played roles in the dramatic period piece “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962) with Marlon Brando, “The List of Adrian Messenger” (1963) with George C Scott and the Laurence Harvey crime drama “The Running Man” (1963). He also appeared in the Laurence Harvey dramatic adaptation “The Ceremony” (1963) and the Peter O’Toole dramatic adaptation “Lord Jim” (1965). Purcell last acted on “The Irish R.M. Part II” (PBS, 1985-86). Purcell was married to Eileen Marmion. Purcell passed away in March 1985 at the age of 85.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Purcell, Noel (1900–85), actor, was born Patrick Joseph Noel Purcell on 23 December 1900 at 11a Lower Mercer Street, Dublin, the elder of the two children of Pierce Purcell, auctioneer, and his second wife, Catherine Purcell (née Hoban), antique dealer. Educated at the Synge Street CBS, he worked after school backstage at the Gaiety Theatre and at Madame Rocke’s Theatre, O’Connell Street, where he became acquainted with John and Thomas MacDonagh and Countess Markievicz . He had periodic walk-on parts at the Gaiety and in 1915 he had a small role with the Irish Players, led by Edward Martyn (qv). He left school at sixteen, and was apprenticed as a joiner to A. H. Bex, shop fitters, but he continued to build a reputation among the city’s amateur dramatic companies, performing regularly at St Theresa’s Temperance Hall, Clarendon Street, Father Mathew Hall and the CYMS, Harrington Street.A seasoned pantomime performer, Purcell joined Tom Powell and Harry Byrne’s company in 1928. During one performance in 1929 he was noticed by Jimmy O’Dea (qv) and Harry O’Donovan (qv), who recruited him for their O’D production company. They toured Britain and Ireland throughout the 1930s, and he was a popular pantomime dame when the company made its annual return to the Olympia theatre. With the company he also made his first film appearances, in Jimmy Boy (1935) and Blarney (1938). Following a dispute over wages, he left the O’D Company in 1939. Inspired by a tour of Broadway, he returned to Ireland in late 1939 and after a spell as Max Wall’s stooge he brought the idea of a black and white minstrel show to Dublin and revolutionised the fortunes of the Theatre Royal. As the war curtailed the number of foreign acts, he was in constant demand throughout the early 1940s. With Eddie Byrne (d. 1981) he was popular in their ‘Nedser and Nuala’ sketches, and he also appeared as Joxer Daly in a 1941 production of Sean O’Casey‘s (qv) ‘Juno and the paycock’ at the Gaiety. He returned to O’Casey in the late 1940s, playing Brennan o’ the Moor in ‘Red roses for me’ and Sylvester Heegan in O’Casey’s ‘The silver tassie’, to great critical acclaim.
As film began to threaten the popularity of the variety revue, he adapted to the trend, and a small part in Carol Reed’s Odd man out in 1946 began a long film career. A character actor, he became, with his famed white beard, film’s archetypal sailor, in The blue lagoon (1949), The crimson pirate (1952), Moby Dick (1956), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). After his performance in Merry Andrew in 1958 he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM. He turned it down, refusing to leave Ireland for such a lengthy period. Cast to play Balthazar in Ben Hur, he arranged a screen test for Tony O’Reilly, but O’Reilly preferred rugby to the prospect of acting, and Purcell lost the role of Balthazar owing to delays in production. In constant demand for his comic cameo performances, his part in Captain Boycott in 1947 made him a natural choice for many films with an Irish theme, including John Ford’s The rising of the moon (1957), Rooney (1958) and Shake hands with the devil (1959).
In 1957 he narrated Bord Fáilte’s promotional film Seven wonders of Ireland. Throughout his film career he supplemented his periodic stage appearances with television and radio work in Ireland, Britain and America. His most popular radio performance was in ‘The great Gilhooly’, made for the BBC Home Service in 1950. He claimed that he refused the role of Fagin in the 1960 musical Oliver, and was later disappointed that he was not offered a role in RTÉ’s 1980 production of Strumpet city. Retiring from film in 1973 after making The mackintosh man, his fifth film for John Huston, he became the quintessential Dublin raconteur and was soon identified with ‘The Dublin saunter’, a song composed for him by Leo Maguire (d. 1985). He still made occasional stage appearances: in 1976 in Noel Pearson’s production of ‘You ain’t heard nuttin’ yet’ and more unexpectedly after his recovery from throat cancer and pneumonia as the Cardinal in a 1982 production of ‘Tosca’.
He was honoured on many occasions throughout his career: he was made an honorary member of the American Loyal League of Yiddish Sons of Erin in 1963 and an honorary life member of the Order of the Knights of Columbanus in 1971. He had been received into the order in 1933. In 1971 he was also made a life member of the Irish Actors’ Equity, an organisation that he had been instrumental in founding in 1947. He had also contributed to the foundation of the Catholic Stage Guild in the late 1940s. The British Actors’ Equity awarded him life membership in 1984, the same year as he was made a freeman of Dublin city. In 1958 he was the subject of an episode of television’s This is your life, and in 1973 an RTÉ Late late show special marked his birthday. The Variety Club of Ireland honoured him in 1968 and 1984 and he received the Variety Artists’ Trust Society award in 1974. He married on 7 July 1941 Eileen Marmion, a one-time child actress with the O’D Company. They had four sons. He died 3 March 1985 after a short illness and was buried in Deansgrange cemetery.
Sources
William J. Feeney, Drama in Hardwicke Street – a history of the Irish theatre company (1984), 74–5; Irish Independent, 4–6 Mar. 1985; Irish Press, 4–6 Mar. 1985; Ir. Times, 4–6 Mar. 1985; Philip Bryan, Noel Purcell: a biography (1992); Kevin Rockett, The Irish filmography (1996); Boylan, 371
Denis O’Dea was a very popular Irish actor who was a leading member of the famed Abbey Theatre players. He was born in Dublin in 1905. He made his film debut in the Irish film “Guests of the Nation” in 1935. The same year he was in Hollywood and part of the cast of John Ford’s classic “The Informer”. Thus began a film career in British and U.S. movies including such films as “The Plough and the Stars”, “The Fallen Idol”, “Under Capricorn”, “Treasure Island”, “Mogambo”, “Never Take No for An Answer” and “Niagara” with Marilyn Monroe in 1953. His final movie was “Esther and the King” with Joan Collins in 1960. He died in 1978. His wife was the magnificent actress Siobhan McKenna and their son Donnacha O’Dea was a noted swimmer and poker player.
“Wikipedia” entry:
He was born in Dublin. When very young he and his mother Kathleen (from County Kerry) moved in with her sister, who kept a boarding house at 54 South Richmond Street. He worked in insurance until taking up acting. O’Dea was a leading member of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, where his work led to a number of notable film roles, including two mid-1930s John Ford films, The Informer (1935 film) and The Plough and the Stars (1936), and the part of the police inspector in pursuit of IRA man James Mason in Carol Reed‘s Odd Man Out(1947).
He was married to actress Siobhán McKenna from 1946 until his death in 1978 at the age of 73; they had one son, Donnacha O’Dea, who was a champion swimmer and professional poker player.
The above “Wikipedia” enry can also be accessed online here.
O’Dea, Denis (1903–78), actor, was born 26 April 1903 in Dublin, the only child of Michael O’Dea, RIC officer, and Katherine O’Dea (née Neilson), both originally from north Co. Kerry. At the time of Denis’s birth they were living at Desmond Place, north Dublin, but they later moved in with Katherine’s sister, Josephine Neill, who ran a boarding house and flats in 52 South Richmond St., which became Denis’s home until his aunt died (c.1957). He was educated at the CBS, Synge St. As a young man he joined the 3rd Dublin Battalion of the IRA and was on the anti-treaty side in the civil war. Arrested after an ambush in St Stephen’s Green when a bystander was killed, he was interned in Newbridge barracks, aged 19. There he held plays on an improvised stage in the dining hall and, after release, he and other ex-internees staged plays at the Rotunda and other venues to raise funds for the dependants of republican prisoners. Rejecting his previous plans to study medicine, he attended the Abbey school of acting and made his first professional appearance in the Abbey in September 1929 in ‘The woman’, a play by Margaret O’Leary. At this period he was working in insurance, but shortly afterwards he went on the Abbey payroll. His early parts included Luke Cary in George Shiels‘s (qv) ‘The new gossoon’ (1930); Donnell Blake in the production by Lennox Robinson (qv) of ‘The moon in the yellow river’ (April 1931) by Denis Johnston (qv); and Michael Taafe in ‘Margaret Gillan’ (17 July 1933) by Brinsley McNamara (qv). He was part of the Abbey tour of America in 1932 and 1938 and, being strikingly handsome, was able to embark on a Hollywood career, although he was almost invariably in supporting roles. His first screen appearance was in The informer (1935) by John Ford (qv), and the following year he appeared as the young Covey in that director’s The plough and the stars (1936) and was singled out for praise in The Times. A noted success was as the chilly, implacable inspector chasing an escaped IRA convict (played by James Mason) through Belfast in Carol Reed’s classic Odd man out (1947).
In September 1946 he married in Salthill, Co. Galway, a young actress from the Abbey company, Siobhán McKenna (qv). The following year both left the Abbey company. Parts in Paramount films – O’Dea was in The mark of Cain (1947) with Eric Portman and The fallen idol (1948) with Ralph Richardson, and McKenna starred in Daughter of darkness (1948) – meant that they spent much of the 1940s living in Chelsea. However, in 1951 they formed an ad hoc company called the Dublin Players, which put on ‘The playboy of the western world’ at the Edinburgh Festival (1951), and then at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin (July 1953). In what had increasingly become the pattern, McKenna starred (as Pegeen Mike) and O’Dea took on a supporting role (as Shameen Keogh). It was the last time they appeared on stage together. Her career soon eclipsed his.
In Dublin they settled in his aunt’s house at Richmond St., where he had grown up, and he became chief carer for their only child, Donncha (b. 1948). The household was Irish-speaking, helped by maids from the Gaeltacht. O’Dea went frequently to Dunquin, Co. Kerry, to improve his Irish. Work on screen and stage became infrequent; in 1955 he appeared as Fr O’Malley in Eddie Dowling’s off-Broadway production of ‘The righteous are bold’ by Frank Carney (1902–76). The director was inexperienced and the play folded after a short run. In 1953 he appeared in Ford’s Mogambowith Grace Kelly, and in 1959 was Fr Murphy in Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the little people, but this proved his penultimate film role. His stage career lasted only a few years longer; he continued to turn in subtle, highly rated performances until the last. The Times (5 Dec. 1959) noted that he made the complex part of the Canon, in Paul Vincent Carroll‘s (qv) ‘Shadow and substance’, comprehensible and even anxiously sympathetic. In 1966, prior to the opening of the new Abbey theatre, he was appointed one of twenty-five new shareholders to advise the directors on theatre policy. After the inaugural meeting he attended no more meetings. He was later nominated with Jack MacGowran (qv), Ray McAnally (qv), and Cyril Cusack (qv) as one of the ten life-members of the Abbey.
A reticent man with a capacity for self-effacement unusual for his profession, O’Dea was noted for his generosity, his wry humour, and his practical jokes. An alleged impersonation of Lennox Robinson (qv) in Louis D’Alton‘s (qv) comedy ‘The money doesn’t matter’ led to Frank O’Connor (qv) in The Bell accusing him of mocking Robinson as an alcoholic sponger. O’Dea sued for libel but, on hearing of the magazine’s impecuniousness, retracted. On another occasion, when Flann O’Brien (qv) refused to take a curtain call, O’Dea took the stage in knee breeches, green coat, and a shillelagh, claiming to be the author.
He died 5 November 1978 in Dublin, having moved after his aunt’s death (c.1957) to Highfield Road, Rathgar. He was survived by his wife and his son, Donncha O’Dea, who was a champion sprinter and swimmer (representing Ireland at the Mexico Olympics in 1968) and a professional poker player who was sixth in the world series in Las Vegas in 1983. In this he resembled his father, a celebrated Dublin poker player, whose long-time friend, Seán Lemass (qv) once warned the writer Gabriel Fallon (qv): ‘Never play with O’Dea. That fellow plays from the cellar up’ (Ir. Times, 7 Nov. 1978).
Sources
Times, 30 Apr. 1931, 8 Feb. 1937, 16 Aug. 1950, 5 Dec. 1959, 7 Nov. 1978; Lennox Robinson, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre (1951); John Parker, Who’s who in the theatre (1952); Robert Hogan and Michael J. O’Neill (ed.), Joseph Holloway’s Irish theatre (1970), ii, iii; Ir. Times, 7 Nov. 1978; Who was who on screen (1983); Micheál Ó hAodha, Siobhán: memoir of an actress (1994); Robert Welch, The Abbey theatre, 1899–1999 (1999)
When Luis Buñuel, during his long exile in Mexico from Spain, was preparing to shoot The Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe (1952), his producers suggested Orson Welles for the title role. But as Buñuel sat down to watch Welles in the film of Macbeth, he immediately thought him “too big and too fat” for the part of the famous castaway. However, the moment the dashing and handsome Dan O’Herlihy, who has died aged 85, appeared as Macduff, Buñuel had found his Crusoe.A film in which an actor is alone on screen for 60 of the 90 minutes running time would seem a foolhardy venture, but the splendid Pathecolour photography, expert editing and O’Herlihy’s well-shaded performance, never allowed it to pall. With superb skill and grace, O’Herlihy moves from a clever but naive youth to the grizzled patriarch, earning himself an Oscar nomination.
The 29-year-old O’Herlihy had been brought to America by Welles for Macbeth (1948) after having made an impression in his film debut as an IRA gunman in Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947). The Wexford-born Irish actor, who had taken up acting to pay for his architectural studies at the National University of Ireland, had already gained a reputation at Dublin’s Gate Theatre (where the teenage Welles had begun his career) in around 50 plays, including the leading role in the first production of Sean O’Casey’s Red Roses For Me (1943). In the text of the play, O’Casey describes Ayamonn Breydon, the working-class Protestant hero, as “tall, well built, twenty-two or so, with deep brown eyes, fair hair, rather bushy, but tidily kept, and his face would remind an interested observer of a rather handsome, firm-minded, thoughtful, and good-humoured bulldog”.O’Herlihy, who eloquently uttered the rousing climactic patriotic speech, fitted the role perfectly. Macbeth led to a 50-year career in Hollywood and on US television, though few leads were forthcoming.
Apart from Robinson Crusoe, one of them was as Alan Breck in a shoestring version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1948) opposite Roddy McDowall (Malcolm in Welles’s Macbeth) as David Balfour. This was followed by several sterling supporting roles in a number of undistinguished swashbucklers such as At Sword’s Point (1952) playing the son of one of the Three Musketeers, and as Prince Hal of Wales in The Black Shield Of Falworth (1954). He was cast as officers in Kiplingesque colonial adventures Soldier’s Three (1952) and Bengal Brigade (1954). He also appeared in Invasion USA (1952), a Red scare sci-fi film, in which he hypnotises patrons drinking at a bar into believing America has been attacked by nuclear weapons.O’Herlihy was sophisticated in Douglas Sirk’s glorious melodrama Imitation Of Life (1959); brutal, in a return to the world of Odd Man Out, as a fanatical, club-footed IRA leader in A Terrible Beauty (1960), and over-the-top in the title role of The Cabinet Of Caligari (1962), a silly remake of the silent expressionistic classic.
One of his best roles in the 1960s was in Sidney Lumet’s Fail Safe (1964) as Brigadier General Black, ordered by President Henry Fonda to drop an atomic bomb on New York City to show the Russians that bombing Moscow was an error.Television series, including The Long Hot Summer (1965), ironically in the role played by Orson Welles in the film version; Colditz (1972), Nancy Astor (1982) and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks (1992) kept him busy. In films, he was Franklin D Roosevelt in MacArthur (1977), starring Gregory Peck, and made himself known to a new generation as the mad toy tycoon in Halloween III: Season Of The Witch (1982), as a lizard-like alien in The Last Starfighter (1984), and eerily effective as the cold-blooded cyborg corporation mogul in Robocop (1987) and Robocop 2 (1990).It was all a long way from his Irish theatrical beginnings, though he recouped some of it in John Huston’s melancholically nostalgic valedictory film The Dead (1987), based on a James Joyce short story, in which he played Mr Brown “the gentleman not of our persuasion”.
Dan O’Herlihy is survived by Elsa Bennett, his wife of 59 years, two daughters and three sons.
· Daniel O’Herlihy, actor, born May 1 1919; died February 17 2005
His Guardian obituary by Ronald Bergan can also be accessed here.
Dictionary of Irish Biography:
O’Herlihy, Dan (Daniel Peter) (1919–2005), actor, was born 1 May 1919 at Odessa Cottage, Wexford town, son of John Robert O’Herlihy, a civil servant from Cork who later worked in the Department of Industry and Commerce, and his wife Ellen (née Hanton), from Wexford; they had at least one daughter, and a younger son, Michael O’Herlihy (1929–97), a television director. The family moved to Dublin when Daniel was one year old. Educated at CBS Dún Laoghaire, as a teenager he developed literary ambitions. On entering UCD, he applied to study law, but rapidly switched to architecture, which allowed him to use his drawing skills. While a student he published political cartoons in Irish newspapers, under the initials TOC.
Enlisted despite his minimal acting experience to perform in a production of the UCD dramatic society when a cast member walked out two days before an amateur festival, O’Herlihy accepted the offer in a spirit of adventure, won a medal, and was offered a part in a play at the Abbey theatre. He appeared as a ‘semi-pro’ in about sixty Abbey productions, but was turned down for the permanent company because Ernest Blythe (qv) thought his Irish insufficient (though he spoke and wrote Irish fluently). He also appeared in Gate theatre productions, and joined touring companies during the holidays. He played Major Sirr (qv) at the Gate in ‘Lord Edward’ (1941) by Christine Longford(qv), and took the lead role of Ayamonn Breydon in the world premiere at the Olympia theatre of ‘Red roses for me’ (1944) by Sean O’Casey (qv). His commitment to acting being motivated in part by a desire to supplement his allowance of half a crown a week from his father, he further augmented his income by working as a relief announcer on Radio Éireann.
After graduating from UCD, O’Herlihy worked part-time for one year in Dublin Corporation’s architecture department, surveying the city’s buildings to determine how they might be protected against air raids. He married (16 August 1945) Elsie Bennett, a wartime WAAF and TCD pre-medical student; they had three sons and two daughters. (In a favourite anecdote, he described his future father-in-law asking how he would support his daughter and a family on an architect’s salary, and his provoking scorn by observing that he also acted in the evenings; when O’Herlihy further asserted that he would make a fortune in Hollywood, he was thrown out of the house.) He abandoned architecture as a profession after landing roles in two films with Irish settings (but shot at Denham Studios, England): Hungry Hill(1947, dir. Brian Desmond Hurst) and Odd man out (1947, dir. Carol Reed); both films paid more for one day’s work than two months as an architect. (He retained a lifelong interest in architecture, and a sense that he was an architect who happened to act; he sometimes designed and/or built his own houses and those of friends and family. His last residence, in Trancas Canyon, Malibu, California, was designed by his architect son Lorcan, and built by O’Herlihy himself.)
O’Herlihy was brought to Hollywood in 1947 by the agent Charles Feldman, with whom he fell out after refusing two studio contracts: ‘I didn’t want anyone to own me.’ O’Herlihy feared that as a studio contract player he could be forced to accept unsuitable roles, thus destroying his long-term prospects. Through a period of considerable financial strain on his young and growing family, he initially got by on radio work, which dried up with the spread of television. Turning down the worst film scripts and accepting the average, in the expectation that good parts would come in time, O’Herlihy deferred to his wife’s judgment of scripts; she also helped him to rehearse as ‘unpaid script girl’. In later interviews the couple observed that the shared struggles of this period helped them to achieve a notably successful and remarkably plainspoken marriage.
Between 1948 and 1955 O’Herlihy appeared, mostly as a supporting player, in thirteen costume drama pictures; these were mainly low-budget productions, such as William Beaudine’s adaptation of Kidnapped (1948), from the adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, for the ‘Poverty Row’ studio Monogram, in which O’Herlihy played Alan Breck Stewart to the David Balfour of Roddy McDowall. Although O’Herlihy’s height (over 6 ft (1.83m)) and reddish-blond good looks were well-suited to this genre, he actively resisted typecasting. In Sword of Venus (1953, dir. Harold Daniels), he was made up effectively to play the role of the elderly villain. Such versatility laid the basis for his later success as a character actor, with a reputation as an ‘actor’s actor’, placing a strong emphasis on spontaneity.
Throughout his career O’Herlihy remained involved in theatre, which he regarded as the actors’ medium par excellence (film being a director’s medium). He made his only Broadway appearance as Charles Dickens in ‘The ivy green’ (1949) by Mervyn Nelson. In 1955 he co-founded the Hollywood School of Drama with his boyhood friend and lifelong associate Charles Davis. When a bit player fell ill during the school’s production of ‘Finian’s rainbow’, O’Herlihy recruited Marlon Brando – who shortly before had lamented to O’Herlihy that he had not appeared on stage for some time – to take on the part for two nights (to the surprise of audience members). In later life O’Herlihy remarked that the writer was the central creative force in drama and that he would have liked to have been a writer. He wrote several unproduced scripts, and between 1985 and 1997 produced a one-man show of his own devising, ‘Five men with a pen’, in which he impersonated writers and recited from their works, including W. B. Yeats (qv), James Joyce (qv), George Bernard Shaw (qv), and Mark Twain. In the television movie Mark Twain: behind the laughter (1979), he gave a much-admired performance as the elderly Twain recalling his life, with his actor son Gavan playing Twain’s younger self.
In 1948 O’Herlihy joined Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre, and played Macduff in Welles’s low-budget film of Macbeth (1948), exercising his architectural skills to design most of the sets, and translating additional dialogue written by Welles into Irish. Welles did not credit O’Herlihy’s work as set designer, and their later relations were tense. O’Herlihy’s performance in the film led in time to his breakthrough role, the lead in The adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1954); the director, Luis Buñuel, responding to a proposal that he cast Welles in the role, screened Macbeth and fixed instead on O’Herlihy. Filmed over a lengthy period in Mexico, the story of a shipwrecked man surviving for twenty-eight years on a remote island demanded that O’Herlihy be alone on screen for the film’s first fifty minutes, and that he deploy his acting skills to portray his character ageing from young manhood to late middle age. He also appears briefly as Crusoe’s elderly father, glimpsed in a fever-driven nightmare. Critically praised for the performance, O’Herlihy received his only Academy Award nomination, for best actor; he was runner-up in the voting to Marlon Brando for On the waterfront (the other nominees were James Mason for A star is born , Humphrey Bogart for The Caine mutiny, and Bing Crosby for The country girl). O’Herlihy received a letter from his father praising his success in his ‘hobby’ and asking when he would return to his profession (i.e., architecture).
Beginning in the mid 1950s O’Herlihy appeared frequently on television, some such performances being among his best work. He generally refused to make long-term commitments to a television series, believing that, while potentially profitable, they were especially vulnerable to commercial constraints and could inflict long-term career damage through typecasting. (He turned down a role in the hit 1960s series Lost in space.) The major exceptions were The travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963–4), a western in which he played the showman father of the juvenile protagonist (Kurt Russell), and The long hot summer (1965–6), for which he was recruited mid-series to replace Edmond O’Brien (who had quarrelled with the producers) as the town boss, Will Varner.
O’Herlihy’s career advancement was hindered by consequences of his determined and forceful character. He continued to refuse unsuitable roles, courted notoriety with outspoken political views, and clashed bitterly with his powerful talent agency. Espousing liberal political views from the 1950s (he supported the Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, the darling of the decade’s liberal intellectuals), he moved further leftward over time, arousing suspicions in some quarters of his being a communist. His remark that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover – whom the cast of a film were about to meet – would be better described not as an American patriot but as a traitor resulted in his being informally shut out from future work for Warner Brothers Pictures. Some of his films had political themes. In Fail-safe (1964, dir. Sidney Lumet), which depicted an accidental American nuclear attack on Moscow, O’Herlihy plays a ‘dovish’ American air force general who argues for restraint, and is obliged by the president (Henry Fonda) to destroy New York to convince the Soviets that the attack on them was accidental. O’Herlihy expressed satisfaction that the film deconstructed the Cold War image of Russians as ruthless fanatics. His contempt for Russophobia increased owing to a lengthy period in 1969 in Uzhgorod, western Ukraine, during the filming of Waterloo (1970, dir. Sergei Bondarchuk), in which he played Marshal Ney. (Personal sympathy for Russians did not equate to admiration for the Soviet system; he noted that the USSR had its own rigid class system, and predicted a future youth revolt resembling that of the late 1960s in the West.) O’Herlihy’s portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in MacArthur (1977, dir. Joseph Sargent) is regarded as one of his finest, and reflected the intellectual fascination with power and its workings that informed his political commitment.
With the decline of the classic studio system, agents became the major brokers in Hollywood; in 1958 the powerful talent agency MCA acquired Universal Studios, creating a conflict of interest in its representation of clients. When O’Herlihy resisted pressure to reprise the Robinson Crusoe role for a Universal television series (stating that he was loathe to go from Buñuel to TV hack direction), the agency ordered him ‘put on ice’. O’Herlihy fired the agency, went public with his complaints, and gave evidence at an anti-trust inquiry, mounted by the Justice department under Attorney General Robert Kennedy, which forced MCA to dissolve its agency component so as to retain control of Universal and its music operations. O’Herlihy’s role in the agency’s defeat was remembered by MCA executives, who exercised considerable power within Hollywood; their enmity inflicted considerable short-term damage on his career and contributed to his spending more time in Ireland.
O’Herlihy had worked in Ireland on the filming of A terrible beauty(1960; dir. Tay Garnett) as a local IRA commander collaborating with Nazi Germany in the 1940s; the film starred Robert Mitchum. Maintaining that his regular visits to Ireland prevented him from romanticising the country, he noted that the socially ambitious Irish middle classes of the relatively affluent 1960s and 1970s resembled their counterparts in California’s San Fernando Valley. He compared the speculatively redeveloped Dublin cityscape of the period to a dishevelled and gap-toothed old man, remarking that it was easy to see from the standard of new building that most Irish architects had emigrated. He and his family lived in Ireland in the mid 1960s and again in 1970–75. Briefly rejoining the Abbey company, he played the lead role of the JFK-emulating publican in the premiere of Tom Murphy’s ‘The White House’ (1972). Asked to become a Labour candidate in the 1973 general election, he declined owing to the impossibility of combining electoral office with the extensive travelling required by his acting career. Finding it necessary to be American-based to remain in demand as a Hollywood actor, and because his children had grown up as Americans, O’Herlihy moved back to America in 1975; he took American citizenship in 1980.
Late film roles included Grig, the friendly alien ‘iguana man’, in The last starfighter (1984; dir. Nick Castle); the Old Man (boss of the malevolent corporation OmniCorp) in RoboCop (1987; dir. Paul Verhoeven, whom O’Herlihy regarded as one of the best contemporary directors) and in RoboCop 2 (1990; dir. Irvin Kershner); the tipsy protestant guest Mr Brown in The dead(1987), adapted by John Huston (qv) from the story by James Joyce; and the sawmill owner Andrew Packard in six episodes of the surreal television serial Twin Peaks (1990–91). His last role was as Joseph Kennedy Sr in the television movie The Rat Pack(1998).
O’Herlihy died 17 February 2005 in Malibu, California, and is buried in St Ibar cemetery, Wexford. Four of his five children worked in theatre and film: Gavan, Cormac, and Patricia as actors, and Olwen as a producer and visual artist. His grandson Colin O’Herlihy became an actor, and his granddaughter Micaela O’Herlihy a multimedia artist.
Sources
GRO (birth cert.); O’Herlihy Papers, UCD Archives, IE UCDA P202 (permission of O’Herlihy family required for consultation; includes catalogue with biographical introduction and filmography; see esp.: P202/18 (collection of published interviews); P202/22 (outline of projected documentary on O’Herlihy); P202/110–11 (Robinson Crusoe material); P202/238 (biographical material); P202/240 (obituaries)); Des Hickey and Gus Smith (ed.), Flight from the Celtic twilight (1973); Kevin Rockett, The Irish filmography: fiction films 1896–1996 (1996); Revisiting Fail-safe, short documentary on 2000 DVD release of Fail-safe; Ir. Times, 19 Feb. 2005; Daily Telegraph, 19 Feb. 2005; Sunday Independent, 20 Feb. 2005; Independent (London), 21 Feb. 2005; Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com; Internet Broadway Database, www.ibdb.com; Irish Playography, www.irishplayography.com (websites accessed July 2011); information from Olwen O’Herlihy Dowling (daughter
The brilliant and versatile Irish actor J. G. Devlin was born in Belfast in 1907. His film debut was in “Captain Lightfoot” with Rock Hudson and Barbara Rush in 1955. His other films include “Jacqueline”, “The Rising of the Moon” and “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” which he made in Hollywood in 1959. He has many television appearances amongst his credits including his hilarious performance as Fr Dooley in the series “Bread”. He died in 1991 at the age of 84.
“Wikipedia” entry:
James Gerard Devlin (8 October 1907 – 17 October 1991) was an Irish actor. In a career spanning nearly fifty years, he played parts in productions such as Z-Cars, Dad’s Army, The New Avengers and Bread. He also guest starred, alongside Leonard Rossiter, in an episode of Steptoe and Son, “The Desperate Hours”. The writers of Steptoe and Son – Ray Galtonand Alan Simpson – have since revealed that Devlin was second choice to play the part of Albert Steptoe in the series, behind Wilfrid Brambell. He also appeared as Father Dooley, a Catholic priest, in several episodes of Carla Lane‘s Bread, probably his last television appearance.
Conor Mullen was born in 1962 in Dublin. His many television credits include “Holby City”, “Single-handed”, “Rough Diamond”and “Proof”. On film he has starred in “The Tiger’s Tail” and “Puckoon”.
Article by Ciara O’Dwyer in “Independent.ie”:
‘THE older you get, the more you think, Jesus, I better start being a bit more serious,” says Sutton-born actor Conor Mullen. “But then again, it has worked out fine for me so far. You always want to do better work and better paid work if you can get it, but you don’t want to spend your time constantly working towards something and missing everything along the way. I wouldn’t be terribly driven. For me, the more relaxed I am, the better I work anyway.”
He shouldn’t change a thing. Mullen is a marvellous actor. He has real presence, a wonderfully rich voice and he is believable in everything he does. And with his blue eyes, high cheekbones and blond hair, theSteve McQueen lookalike is very easy on the system too. I once travelled to London especially to see a production of a play in which he starred. It was Conor McPherson‘s brilliant This Lime Tree Bower at the Bush Theatre. (After a quiet run in Dublin at the Crypt Theatre, London audiences couldn’t get enough of it. And they were right.) It was well worth the trek.
That spell in the Bush proved to be very fruitful for Mullen. It was then that his extensive career in television dramas in the UK took off. Producers and agents spotted him and snapped him up. Soon they were offering him great work. A part in the television series Reckless, starring Francesca Annis, was followed by a stint in Soldier, Soldier. And on he soared. Many people may know him from his work in Holby City and Silent Witness.
A lot of the time, Mullen plays bad guys. At the moment, you can see him on your TV screen in Raw, where he plays Larry Deane.
“I’m usually a nasty piece of work,” says Mullen. “I play all the psychopaths. Type-cast again.” He laughs. He has a very easy way about him. It is refreshing to come across someone so calm and laid -back, especially in these frantic times.
When I meet him, he has just finished a day’s rehearsal for No Romance. (It is running in the Peacock until April 2.) Mullen plays the part of Michael, a frazzled man who travels down to West Cork with his PlayStation-addicted son, and plans to take his own mother up to Dublin and put her in a nursing home.
“He is a man under a severe amount of pressure and he doesn’t respond well to pressure,” says Mullen. “His marriage has fairly recently broken down acrimoniously. He’s trying to cultivate a relationship with his son and that’s not working out. (He tells him to get his head out of that f***ing PlayStation.) And he’s trying to put his mother into a nursing home because he’s worried that something is going to happen to her, but she doesn’t want to go. He’s trampling on her rights. The play deals with the question of when are you within your rights to take away somebody else’s rights?
“Michael is a very selfish individual. It’s all about what the situation means to him and how is he going to cope with it. He is falling apart. He’s so wired. It’s good fun because there are great lines in it. It’s so well written. Usually the best writing doesn’t feel like work. It’s the easiest to do.”
It has been a while since Mullen has been on our Dublin stages. Four years ago, he was at the Gate in Lady Windermere’s Fan and before that it was in the Peacock in Patrick Marber‘s Closer. “It’s about time that I got back out,” he says.
Whether people know it or not, Mullen infiltrates our lives. He does a lot of voice-over work, and in particular most people probably have daily contact with him as the voice of Eircom. It is his golden voice that you can hear when you pick up the phone to be told: “You have no new messages.”
“All actors are delighted to get a voice-over job,” he says. “You’ve got to have a few strings to your bow. If you decided that you’re only going to do theatre, the chances are you’re not going to be going from one play to the next. You wouldn’t be able to survive. Some people do character voices for cartoons and some do voice-overs, so you do whatever you can to keep going.”
There was a spell when it seemed there was only a handful of actors doing voice-overs, but Mullen says that it’s different these days. “The voice-over work is still going strong, but there’s a lot more people doing it now.”
All the same, his voice is beautifully resonant. What does he do to keep it so rich? “It’s just bad living,” he says.
Although he is serious about his work, the delightful thing about Mullen is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. I’ve always had a soft spot for him, ever since he told me that he was great at staring out of a window and doing nothing. I interviewed him 10 years ago and he still looks very fresh faced; so glowing, that I presume he’s just back from a holiday. Not so. “It’s probably blood pressure,” he says.
The 49-year-old has hardly aged at all. It feels a bit odd to ask a man what he does to keep so youthful, but he does look incredibly well. U2’s Larry Mullen Jr is his cousin and he is another Dorian Gray. So, is this from the Mullen side of the family? “My father passed away last year. He was 85 and he looked great, but my mother will be reading this, so you better say that it’s from her side of the family.”
But what does he do? “No, I’m not doing facials and I haven’t had Botox.” Then he pulls a pious face. “Prayer. I have my faith and it stood to me.” There’s more laughter.
In some ways, Mullen is an accidental actor. He tried many lives for size before he made up his mind that he was going to have a bash at this acting lark. He grew up in Sutton, the third of six children. His mother was a keen theatre-goer and so the family were treated to trips to the Gaiety pantomime.
Both parents were pharmacists and they had a chemist shop in Terenure. Mullen confesses that he didn’t really apply himself when he was at school and then he was shocked when his Leaving Cert results were mediocre. University was not an option.
Instead, he did an Anco course in sales and, supplied with a car, he went on to work as a sales merchandiser for Guinness and later Wrigley chewing gum. Then his father offered him a job. (By that stage, he was selling medical supplies instead of working in the Terenure pharmacy.)
“I knew nothing about it,” says Mullen. “I was selling everything from mammary implants to TB drugs to blood filters. The products were very good. They spoke for themselves, apparently, because I didn’t know how to speak for them.”
When I ask how his love of theatre began, he is at a loss to pinpoint a specific event. He tells me that he just started going to see plays. Joe Dowling’s production of Death of a Salesman, starring Ray McAnally, had a lasting effect on him. It wasn’t long before he signed up for acting classes at the Brendan Smith Academy and shortly after that he headed to New York, to study acting at The Neighbourhood Playhouse for two years.
“I wanted to get away and it was a toss of a coin really,” he says. “It was going to be London, but London wasn’t far enough away. I wanted to be gone and to have a whole new world.”
New York fitted the bill. “I stayed with an old maiden aunt for a few weeks, then crashed on a couch and eventually I was living in Manhattan in a sublet. One of the first jobs I got was a lifeguard in a swimming pool in a 24-hour gym.”
Was he qualified? “Not at all. I told them that my certification was in the post. I could just about swim. I could splash around and tell people to get out of the water. I worked from 11 at night until seven in the morning. It was like something out of a David Lynch film, sitting by the pool at three in the morning with no one in it.”
He adds: “The thing about New York, and I’m sure that it’s still the same, from the moment you arrive, you feel part of it, because New York is whoever is there at that moment.”
Did he go wild while he was there? “I did go a bit feral all right.”
When he returned to Dublin, he started auditioning for roles. Eventually, theatre work came in. And along the way, he was approached to do some voice-over work.
These days, Mullen lives in Howth with his wife, the Scottish actress Fiona Bell, and their three-year-old daughter Cassie. (He has two daughters — Hannah and Georgia — from his first marriage.)
Does he feel ancient being a father second time around? “No. I don’t feel ancient anyway. I know it’s a cliche, but kids keep you young. Cassie is great. She’s at that age where she’s all chat and running around the place and coming up with mad ideas.
“Hannah is in college doing Communications and Georgia is still at school. But it’s nice with Cassie there — Hannah and Georgia are around more, playing with her.”
When Cassie was born, Mullen decided to take a bit of time off and stay at home. He had done six months of TV work in the UK, so life was good. But after his break, the phone didn’t ring.
“It was kind of like falling off a cliff,” he says. “It’s only in recent years when you’re too old to do anything else, you think, how am I going to pay the bills? I started getting worried and saying this is a tough job. It was always a tough job, but the last few years I’ve been out of work for longer periods than ever before.”
After a very quiet year, work picked up. He did Single-Handed, Raw and When Harvey Met Bob. Is it a worry with two actors in the house? “If you’re not working, you’re not paying the bills. It doesn’t matter who is working, as long as somebody is working. But mostly I’ve been fortunate,” he adds, then smiles.
And so it will continue. Conor Mullen will be just fine. He’s very good at what he does. Cream always rises to the top.
No Romance is showing at the Peacock Theatre until April 2, and is directed by Wayne Jordan. Tickets are priced from €13. For more information, visit www.abbeytheatre.ie or telephone (01) 878-87222
Sunday Indo Living
The above “Independent.ie” article can also be accessed online here.
Mia FarrowMia FarrowOriginal Cinema Quad Poster; Movie Poster; Film Poster
Mia Farrow was born in Los Angeles in 1945. She is the daughter of famed Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan and Australian film director John Farrow. She had her first major film role in “Guns at Batas” in 1964. She achieved international recognition for her role as Alison McKenzie on the very popular tv series “Peyton Place”. She mas many important films in her credits including “Rosemary’s Baby” in 1969, “The Great Gatsby”, “Aedding”, “Broadway Danny Rose”, “Hannah and her Sisters” and “Alice”. She is a very committed human rights activist and is a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF.
TCM Overview:
Known for her intense performances onscreen, no script could ever match the real life drama that followed actress Mia Farrow throughout her tumultuous life and career. Born to Hollywood royalty, she first burst into public view as the star of the hugely popular primetime soap “Peyton Place” (ABC, 1964-69) and as the teen bride of superstar Frank Sinatra, followed by a career-making turn in Roman Polanski’s horror classic “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968). More notable roles followed in high-profile films such as “The Great Gatsby” (1974), in addition to another celebrity marriage to renowned composer-conductor, André Previn. It was, however, Farrow’s extended relationship with revered filmmaker Woody Allen that would produce not only some of the actress’ finest work – “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984), “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986) and “Alice” (1990), among others – but her greatest heartache, as well. The shocking revelation that Allen had been in a sexual relationship with their 21-year-old adoptive daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, in 1992 shook Farrow’s world to its foundation, simultaneously ending both her longest-running romantic relationship and most fruitful artistic collaboration. In the years that followed the scandal, Farrow continued to act, although her humanitarian work in the East African region of Darfur and her own growing family clearly took precedence. Seemingly meek and emotionally fragile – traits skillfully exploited in her acting – Farrow ultimately emerged as a survivor, as well as a voice for children around the world.
Born Maria de Lourdes Villiers Farrow on Feb. 9, 1945 in Los Angeles, “Mia” was the daughter of Irish actress Maureen O’Sullivan – famous for her portrayal of Jane in the Johnny Weissmuller “Tarzan” films – and Australian-born writer-director John Farrow. One of seven children, the waifish blonde’s idyllic childhood in Beverly Hills was interrupted by an early hardship she was temporarily afflicted with polio at age nine. The effects of the traumatic, lonely experience would stay with Farrow throughout the remainder of her life, most notably in the authentically fragile nature she exhibited in many of her later film performances. Recovered from her illness, a preteen Farrow expressed an interest in pursuing an acting career and was promptly rewarded by being sent to a convent school in Europe by her disapproving father. Ironically, it was he who gave his daughter – along with several of her siblings – her acting debut with an uncredited cameo in a nautical adventure film he was writing and directing at the time, “John Paul Jones” (1959). The experience only strengthened the girl’s resolve; in a sad twist of fate, it was only after her father’s sudden death from a heart attack in 1963, that she would begin to achieve her career goal.
At the age of 18, Farrow made her professional stage debut as Cicely in an off-Broadway production of Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners “The Importance of Being Earnest” in 1963. Farrow gained substantial positive publicity for her early stage work, thanks in large part to her mother’s best friend, actress Vivien Leigh, who encouraged casting agents and journalists to attend. One person in attendance was television producer Paul Monash, who promptly sought out the young actress and offered her a role on his upcoming series. Although she had envisioned remaining in New York City, Farrow accepted the role of Alison MacKenzie, the naïve waif in the pioneering primetime soap opera “Peyton Place” (ABC, 1964-69). Things began happening very quickly for Farrow, who lucked into another small part in the feature film “Guns at Batasi” (1964) prior to accepting her role on the experimental TV show. Convinced that no one would tune in to “Peyton Place,” Farrow began looking for other work, even auditioning for the role of Liesl von Trapp in the “The Sound of Music” (1965). The 20-year-old actress was caught off guard when “Peyton Place” turned out to be an instant success, consequently turning her into a media sensation seemingly overnight. Now a full-fledged star, her personal life soon reflected her new celebrity status – in no way more so than with her whirlwind romance and marriage to Frank Sinatra in 1966.
Nearly 30 years Farrow’s senior, the legendary entertainer was soon pressuring her to leave the hit series, and shortly after their wedding she did just that, exiting “Peyton Place” at the end of the second season. Hungry for more diverse roles, she quickly went to work in other projects, such as the small screen remake of the drama “Johnny Belinda” (ABC, 1967), followed by the British spy thriller “A Dandy in Aspic” (1968), starring Laurence Harvey. The Roman Polanski-directed classic occult thriller “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) marked a major turning point in both Farrow’s budding career and her personal life. Sinatra had intended to have his young wife co-star opposite him in his upcoming crime drama, “The Detective” (1968) and was less than pleased with Farrow when she accepted the lead in the horror movie. Tensions came to a boiling point when the “Rosemary’s Baby” schedule prevented her from working on his movie and the famously short-tempered Sinatra retaliated by serving her divorce papers on the set of her film in front of the entire cast and crew. Distraught and ready to quit the production, Farrow was eventually convinced to stay on the picture by producer Robert Evans, who wooed the young actress with promises of an Oscar nomination for her role. While that prediction did not come to pass, Farrow’s performance as a pregnant young wife whose husband (John Cassavettes) is in league with a coven of Satan worshippers, did garner a Golden Globe nomination, in addition to rave reviews by the likes of influential film critic Pauline Kael.
Farrow followed with another performance as an emotionally fragile young woman alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the psycho-melodrama “Secret Ceremony” (1968), although her success at portraying these delicate child-women quickly threatened to typecast her. In the wake of her split from Sinatra, Farrow travelled to India in 1968, where she sought out the teachings of noted spiritualist Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Much to her surprise, she was soon joined by The Beatles, who had also come to study at the ashram. A rumor about the Maharishi’s inappropriate sexual advances toward Farrow persisted for decades, although it was eventually dispelled over the years by several people who had first-hand knowledge of the visit. Another rumor, more readily acknowledged, was that John Lennon’s classic song “Dear Prudence” was written about Farrow’s sister of the same name, who also accompanied the eclectic group on their Eastern quest for enlightenment. Professionally, Farrow continued to seek more challenging roles, as was the case with “John and Mary” (1969), a romantic drama in which she played a young woman retroactively getting to know a man (Dustin Hoffman) the morning after their impromptu one-night-stand. Not all of her career choices were as well-calculated, however, such as when she turned down the role of Mattie Ross opposite screen legend John Wayne in the Western classic “True Grit” (1969), a decision she openly regretted years later.
Farrow took on new challenges in her personal life, as well, including a marriage to noted composer André Previn in 1970, followed by the birth of twins Matthew and Sascha, a third child, Fletcher, and the adoption of Vietnamese infants Lark and Summer Song over a six year period. She impressed audiences once again with another “girl in peril” role, this time as a blind woman stalked by a psychotic killer in the chilling “See No Evil” (1971). On TV that same year, she played a suicidal actress being consoled by a veteran Hollywood screenwriter (Hal Holbrook) in “Goodbye, Raggedy Ann” (CBS, 1971). She was next seen in theaters as an emotionally unsatisfied wife being tailed by a private detective (Topol) in “The Public Eye” (1972), followed by a turn opposite French New Wave icon Jean-Paul Belmondo in director Claude Chabrol’s sex comedy “High Heels” (1972). Amidst great fanfare, Farrow was next cast as narcissistic jazz-era socialite Daisy Buchanan in the lavish remake of “The Great Gatsby” (1974), starring opposite screen idol Robert Redford in the title role. While the interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s indictment of America’s upper-class managed to follow the book’s details, critics, by and large, felt that it missed the emotional core of the characters, focusing instead upon gorgeous set designs and the ephemeral beauty of its cast. As for her involvement, it was not so much Farrow’s performance that was found lacking, as much as the widely-held opinion that she was simply miscast.
On the other hand, Farrow was delightful as “Peter Pan” (NBC, 1976) in a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” production that drew favorable comparisons to Mary Martin’s iconic portrayal. She revisited the horror genre in the British ghost story “The Haunting of Julia” (1977), as a wealthy woman victimized by a vengeful spirit. The following year, Farrow offered a trio of performances in a series of vastly dissimilar films. Intriguing as a mute bridesmaid in Robert Altman’s romantic drama “A Wedding” (1978) and devilishly nasty as a jilted lover in the all-star Agatha Christie adaptation “Death on the Nile” (1978), Farrow was completely wasted opposite Rock Hudson in the subpar mountain disaster movie “Avalanche” (1978). After her amicable divorce from Previn – the conductor had spent much of their marriage away on tour – Farrow made her Broadway debut in 1979 opposite Anthony Perkins in “Romantic Comedy,” followed by a turn in the Dino De Laurentiis-produced misfire, “Hurricane” (1979). Eager to pair the actress with her “Rosemary’s Baby” director again, Polanski had been originally slated to helm the big-budget feature. However, his arrest on charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl delayed his involvement, and ultimately led to his being replaced as the film’s director at the last minute, a sudden change of plan reflected in the poorly executed final production.
Introduced to filmmaker Woody Allen by Michael Caine in 1982, the actress was immediately smitten by the neurotic New York intellectual, and soon assumed the role of his artistic muse. Beginning with the lightweight “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” Farrow’s collaborations with the prolific director created a truly astonishing array of characters. Her best work under Allen’s guidance included the 1920s psychiatrist in “Zelig” (1983), the brassy gangster’s moll in “Broadway Danny Rose” (1984), the downtrodden wife in “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985) and the luminous sibling center of “Hannah and Her Sisters” (1986), with the latter filmed in large part at Farrow’s Central Park West apartment. Other notable work with Allen included turns in “Radio Days” (1987) and “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989), as well as her underappreciated characterization of “Alice” (1990), a unique Allen-esque spin on Lewis Carroll’s tale. Her final two films with Woody Allen – “Shadows and Fog” (1991) and “Husbands and Wives” (1992) – arrived in theaters just as the life she had created with the venerated director – which included a son and two more adopted children – began to unravel. Upon discovering several pornographic photographs in his home, a stunned Farrow realized that Allen had begun a romantic relationship with one of the adopted daughters from her earlier marriage, 21-year-old Soon-Yi Previn, who had posed for his camera. Instantly, the sordid affair became fodder for an insatiable tabloid media, driven to a near frenzy when Farrow later accused Allen of molesting another of their younger adoptive children.
The disturbing, vindictive and messy battle played itself out in the press and the courtroom for more than a year, concluding with molestation charges against Allen being dropped, full custody of the children being awarded to Farrow, and Soon-Yi marrying the unrepentant director. Meanwhile, the emotionally battered actress sought comfort in the two usual places – family and work. Adopting six more children between 1992 and 1995, she embarked on the next phase of her career, sans Allen. She employed her seemingly fragile persona to good effect in the dark comedy “Widow’s Peak” (1994). Farrow then joined the ensemble cast of the poorly-received romantic comedy “Miami Rhapsody” (1995), before taking part in another misfire, the dark comedy “Reckless” (1995), adapted from the stage play of the same name by Craig Lucas. As the 1990s wound down, the actress returned to the small screen to play a Danish woman aiding Jews during WWII in “Miracle at Midnight” (ABC, 1998), and essayed a victim of Alzheimer’s disease in “Forget Me Never” (CBS, 1999). Farrow also made a rare appearance in episodic television – something she had not done since her days on “Peyton Place” – with a recurring role as Mona Mitchell on the drama “Third Watch” (NBC, 1999-2005). One of the few high points in the film, Farrow was perfectly cast as the satanic nanny, Mrs. Baylock, in the otherwise disappointing remake of “The Omen” (2006). Also that year, she voiced the character of Granny for “Arthur and the Invisibles” (2006), the first of three entries in the animated fantasy series, produced by French filmmaker, Luc Besson.
Other roles included a turn as Amanda Peet’s mother in the lackluster comedy “The Ex” (2006) and a supporting role in eclectic director Michael Gondry’s oddball comedy-drama “Be Kind Rewind” (2008). As it had so many times before, tragedy struck her family once again when her daughter, Lark, died on Christmas day 2008, after a prolonged illness. Although the cause of death was not officially divulged, years earlier, Lark’s then-husband had claimed that she was infected by the AIDS virus after being tattooed with a dirty needle. Farrow’s already shaken world was rocked further when her brother Patrick, a noted artist and sculptor, committed suicide in his Vermont gallery in 2009. Moving forward, she narrated the documentary short “The Darfur Archives” (2010), a project close to her heart that reflected Farrow’s deep and abiding commitment to activism which began more than a decade earlier with frequent visits to the impoverished, war-torn region of Northeast Africa’s Sudan. In the mid-2000s she began writing extensively about the humanitarian crisis in various national publications and on her personal website, miafarrow.org. Farrow was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by TIME magazine after her public chastising of director Steven Spielberg prompted the filmmaker to withdraw his involvement in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics being held in China, a strong supporter of the Sudanese government.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Colm O’Maonli was born in 1966 in Dublin. He is the son of Galway actress Eithne Lydon and the brother of Liam O’Maonli of the muusic group The Hothouse Flowers. Colm made his film debut in 1998 in “Middleton’s Changling”. He has starred in two popular television series, “Eastenders” and “Fair City”. His films include “I Could Read the Sky” and “The Haunting of Hell House”.
Article in “Independent.ie” in 2012:
Once upon a time there were two brothers. Liam was the quiet, talented, focused one. Colm, it seemed, was the playboy, the lazy one, the socialite. Good at looking good, born to live the rock star life, without actually putting out product. And now all of that has changed. Colm O Maonlai has landed a major role in ‘EastEnders’, in which he plays a handsome Irish rogue. Art, it would appear, has imitated life. Victoria Mary Clarke met her old friend.
THE FIRST time I met Colm O Maonlai, he was wearing a wedding dress and red lipstick. And sporting a beard. It was a sensuous summer afternoon, such as can sometimes be experienced in Ireland, and I was at the seaside with some friends.
The sight of Colm in his wedding dress was an arresting one. Not a man you forget easily, this chap. Several things about him attracted me, not least the dress. A sense of fun, an audacity, a willingness to defy convention and be different, be outrageous, be laughed at. Very sad blue eyes, too. Verve and vulnerability.
Later on, he took off the wedding dress and swam naked with his friend; still later he got into bed with one of my friends. Very few women, it would appear, have proved immune to the charming of Colm. Many women that I know have succumbed. I myself have flirted. And yet, in spite of all this, success in the acting business has, until now, eluded him. If ever a man was born to be centre stage this man surely was.
There is, however, a famous older brother. His name is Liam O Maonlai and most of us know him as the lead singer of the Hothouse Flowers, a group who seemed at one point poised to challenge U2 for their position as Ireland’s most popular band. Liam, unlike Colm, is shy and serious and when he’s not on stage, avoids the limelight assiduously. But he’s always been the more famous of the two brothers.
Liam, it appeared, was the creative one, the talented one, the focused one. Colm, it seemed, was the playboy, the lazy one, the socialite. Good at looking good, good at making conversation, good at choosing wines and restaurants. Born to live the rock star life, without actually putting out product. And now, all of that has changed. Colm has landed a major role in EastEnders, a popular soap opera with millions of viewers. He plays a loveable, handsome Irish rogue, a ladykiller who beds women. Art, it would appear, has imitated life.
The Hothouse Flowers, meanwhile, no longer tour the world, playing to stadium crowds. Colm has, he says, stuck it out for 10 years and success has naturally arrived.
The last time we met, last December, it was Colm’s birthday. He was utterly broke and very depressed. I bought him a bottle of turquoise aura enhancer, to unblock his throat chakra. He didn’t have the price of a pint, but we agreed that he would round up the bus fare that night, and we would go for a drink. He had, he said, despaired of ever getting work and was seldom going out. But it was his birthday.
Sitting here now, in Borehamwood, just down the road from Elstree Studios, he samples several different wines, before choosing an appropriate one for the meal. And he sports a snappy overcoat and a Grecian tan. But he does not forget that all of this could be taken away in an instant. And he remembers how devastating it was to be unemployed.
“I was absolutely at the end of my tether,” he says, about that birthday. “I was emotionally, physically and mentally drained. There was nobody in the house except me, and I took my bed down to the sitting room and spent two months lying there. Waking up, turning on the television and lying there and only going out to buy food. Nursing my ego. Eventually, I snapped out of it. The sun was shining that day.”
Colm is a man of many contradictions. And, he admits, many demons. Most of whom he will not confront. Not yet. Acting, he says, is a way to hide. And a way to focus. Now that he is working full-time, he couldn’t be happier. There isn’t time for self-examination.
When he asked me if I would like to interview him, he suggested that he was willing to talk candidly about his personal life. Now that I am here, he says, the thought disturbs him.
I ask him if he ever wonders about the meaning of life, about what, if anything, dictates what hand we will be dealt.
“I can’t even go for a massage because of the fear that I might discover something that I don’t want to. I’m not in any rush to get down to the nitty gritty!”
But, I insist, sometime you’ll have to.
“Most people don’t. There is no answer.”
You don’t believe people are born with a purpose? I say.
“No. And I’m a lazy person.”
Are you?
“You know I am. I am terribly lazy.”
But you were born to be rich and famous, I say, because you took so naturally to that lifestyle.
“I have no idea where that comes from. But it makes life easier.”
You didn’t want to work hard and make money, become an investment banker?
“I was shit at school. I had no interest in school, only in sports. Hurling and football and tennis and basketball, table tennis, snooker, every sport I am well into. Long distance running. But I started smoking when I was 13 and that put paid to that.”
How about music? – his father was an engineer who sang and according to Colm he had such a beautiful voice it made him weep.
“I play the whistle, and the bodhran. It seems to me that I’ve got talents, but I don’t know what to do with them. I was always too afraid to make a mistake. Look at Liam, he’s completely open to the music, that’s his life. He’ll take his whistle out on the train, and he doesn’t give a shit.”
You are more sensitive to what people say and think about you?
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Have you been overshadowed by Liam?
He pauses. “I suppose I have been overshadowed. How’s it going? Hey, how’s Liam? You just have to deal with that and I have dealt with it. I’ve found my own niche and it’s got nothing to do with music. I couldn’t be competitive with Liam.”
Why not?
“I would kill him! It’s a great chance for me, being here, to get rid of that stigma. Now I’m here I can be a great actor!”
From the very beginning of his life, Colm took the jester’s role, while Liam played the straight man.
“My earliest memory is of Liam walking me up and down the stairs, I was about one-and-a-half. We were walking down and we got to the second step and he let go, thinking that I was OK, and I fell over and fell right down to the bottom, hit my head off the wall and started laughing.”
That could be a metaphor for your life.
The brothers were brought up in a deeply religious family, who spoke Irish and went to Mass.
“Nine months and a day after my parents got married, Liam was born. And I suppose my parents thought, ‘Oh, we could do this again.'” And they did. My father’s parents were very religious, they went to Mass twice a day. And two of his sisters are nuns and his brother is a priest. Out of the four of them.”
Colm may not have embraced religion, but he does love to speak Irish.
“It’s a hugely important part of my life. My father was taught by his father and his father was very patriotic. He served in the IRA. And he was a very hard man, very hard. We grew up speaking Irish. If I’m around Irish people, I think in Irish. It’s a different rhythm, different attitude, different emotions. It’s amazing, if you are speaking Irish, you almost have to be poetic!”
The first play that Colm acted in was Fiche Bliain ag Fas, at the Abbey, when he was 13.
“I loved it. And I thought why would I want to go to school, when I can do this?”
I suggest that he practises acting in his daily life, on a regular basis. Charming the ladies, for example.
“That’s something I learned in Kerry, actually. I was caught fiddling with the maid and I talked my way out of it. Layers. I probably have quite a few layers.”
Sagittarians, I say, are known for being direct.
“I’m an actor. I probably learned it as a device to put up with shit growing up. Everyone has hassles growing up and you just devise strategies to deal with them. Let’s just say that mine wasn’t the easiest of growing-ups. But I won’t talk about that. That will be a book. I’ll have to kill everyone off first! I’ve got nothing to say. I don’t like whitebait.”
Has wanting to be an actor got something to do with wanting to be approved of, and liked, I ask. Is there an element of vanity involved? And attention-seeking? He pauses again.
“Yeah, there is.”
The first time I met you, you were wearing a dress and lipstick, I remind him.
“Oh yeah, why not? Wear a dress, wear some lipstick, especially with a beard.”
On another occasion, Colm insisted on joining me for dinner with Van Morrison, with his lipstick on.
Why the wedding dress and the lipstick?
“It wasn’t a wedding dress, it was a bridesmaid’s dress. They were mad times, actually.”
You were a bit wild. You don’t seem so mad now.
“I had nothing to focus on.”
Except going out, every night.
“I couldn’t have done that, I didn’t have any money.”
No, but you always met people who did.
“I was not a sponger! I was entertaining, so people bought me drinks. I went down to Slogadh once and I had eight pence in my pocket, so I decided to knock pints back in one go, as a way of getting people to buy me drinks and I got eight pints before I knew it.”
Was that just a way of getting attention?
“Maybe. It does work. But I think at 35 it’s time to decide what to do with my life. Get into the pot belly and forget about how I look. Get it together and stop messing.”
Would you like to be very famous?
“I don’t know.”
If I was a Hollywood producer and I said I will make you a big star?
“I would think it would depend on the part. Fame is useless, by itself. You have to be working. That’s why I feel really sad about these Big Brother people. These people have no idea what they are letting themselves in for.”
You have become a little bit famous.
“Yes. But it’s been great. People say ‘hello’ and smile, which is a lovely thing. It’s hilarious really, to have gone from nothing to this. I was as prepared as you can be, for being recognised, because of hanging out with Liam. And, of course, Bono and me are good mates!”
People used to mistake you for Liam.
“Yes, at one stage I got really freaked out. People would come up and say ‘Can I have your autograph?’ I would say ‘Why?’ And in the end it was easier to just do it, rather then explain that I was a different person.”
But in Ireland you were already known.
“Just from a couple of ads. I met this guy in Greece, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, you’re from that butter ad.’ I said don’t talk to me about that butter ad, God almighty! And then he said ‘You’re in EastEnders as well!’ Sometimes when you are in a bad mood, to get a letter from a fan, to know that there’s somebody out there who thinks you are doing a good job is great. I have no problem with being recognised.”
Are you seeing somebody at the moment?
“Yes I am. Her name is Fiona. She’s like a rock you find in the sea when you go on holidays and she’s always there to go back to. She’s not a famous actress. No, never again!”
What do you mean, did you go out with a famous actress?
“No. Or did I? Maybe I did. It’s a possibility.” Colm has had relationships with several high-profile women, but this is something that he doesn’t want to talk about. He says it wouldn’t be fair.
You have a reputation for being something of a Casanova, I say. He laughs.
“You don’t think that’s why I got this part? Ah, no, I’m getting bored with that, with being stereotyped as a womaniser.”
But you certainly were a womaniser.
“I like women!” He thinks about this and looks serious, for a moment. “I don’t think I do actually like women. I need them. But I don’t like them.”
When did you first fall in love?
“With you! Ha ha. No, I was 11 when I first had my heart broken. Down in Kerry. This woman just came out of nowhere and she was absolutely beautiful, dark hair, sallow skin. I’m really into sallow skin.”
Does your mother have sallow skin?
“No. It doesn’t always have anything to do with your mother! Anyway I’m not going to talk about my mother. So many times, I wanted to say to this girl ‘I love you, I’m madly in love with you.’ And I never did. And I wrote to her and never got a reply and I was absolutely devastated. I was absolutely besotted and we got on really well. Maybe she was just not into me. Maybe she didn’t like boys. I was very, very let down, I wrote to her when I got home. I said, ‘Please write to me and tell me that you are still alive.’ And that scared her off completely.”
Do you know her name? “I shut it out, it was too much to bear. Every time I was with her, I was overwhelmed. Obviously, she couldn’t give a shit. And that’s why every letter I get from a fan, I will always write back.”
Colm may not like women, but one senses that he will be kinder to them in future, now that he can get paid to be roguish on television. He may even plumb the depths of his soul for more demanding roles when he leaves EastEnders.
Or he may not. He does not like to have his soul disturbed and he didn’t like my questions. “I’m never doing another interview again,” he assures me, as we get up to leave. “Never.”
The abovr “Independent.ie” article can also be accessed online here.
Patrick Bedford began his acting career in the Gate Theatre, Dublin. He was born in Dublin in 1932. In 1964 he starred on Broadway in “Philadelphia, Here I Come” by Brian Friel to massive critical acclaim. In the U.S. he starred opposite Sandy Dennis in the film “Up the Down Staircase” in 1967. Other films include “People in Glass Houses” and “The Next Man” in 1979. He died in New York City in 1999.
His obituary in “The Irish Echo”:
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — The actor Patrick Bedford, who was a central figure in the revival of the Gate Theatre in Dublin, in association with Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, has died in New York.
He was 67.
Born in Dublin, Bedford had lived in the U.S. for many years.
Patrick Bedford
He began his career in amateur productions before making his professional debut in “Tolka Row” in 1951.
During the 1950s and ’60s he played a variety of shows in the Gate and starred in Brian Friel’s “Philadelphia Here I Come” when the production scored a huge success in Dublin and then in the U.S.
He also did a national tour of America with the musical “1776” which visited 38 cities in two years.
When Hilton Edwards died, he left his and MacLiammoir’s shareholdings in the Gate Theatre to Bedford and the architect Michael Scott.
Patrick Bedford
In 1988, the Gate was handed over to a trust and Bedford became a trustee which he remained until his death.
The above “Irish Echo” can also be accessed online here.
Susan Lynch was born in 1971 in Newry in Northern Ireland. She is the younger sister of actor John Lynch. Her first film was “The Secret of Roan Inish” in 1994. Other films include “Nora” and “Beautiful Creatures”. Her most recent film is “Hideaways”.
Jamie Bamber was born in 1973 in Hammersmith. He is currently starring on television in “Law & Order UK”. He has also starred on tv in “Battlestar Gallactica”. His films include “Ghost Rig”.
Domhnall Gleeson was born in Dublin in 1983. His father is the reknowned actor Brendan Gleeson. Domhnall has acted with the famed Druid Theatre in Galway. He starred on Broadway in Martin McDonagh’s “The Lieutenant of Inishmore”. On film he has starred in “Studs”, the remake of “True Grit” and played Bill Weasley in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”
.TCM Overview:
Once you get past the intimidating-looking name (hint: it rhymes with tonal) and his impressive pedigree (his father is well-known Irish actor Brendan Gleeson), it’s easy to see why the multi-talented Domhnall Gleeson has become so successful. Though he initially resisted becoming an actor, early appearances in two U.K. miniseries, “Rebel Heart” (BBC, 2001) and “The Last Furlong” (RTE, 2005), eventually gave way to roles in plays such as David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” and Martin McDonagh’s “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” Projects like his 2009 self-written directorial debut, the short film “What Will Survive Us,” and his stint as a writer and performer on the Irish sketch-comedy series “Your Bad Self” (RTE, 2010) fueled Gleeson’s creativity, while his role as Bill Weasley in the epic “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” (2010) and “Part 2” (2011), along with memorable performances in “Never Let Me Go” (2010) and “True Grit” (2010), provided international exposure. After a strong 2012 that found him in both “Shadow Dancer” and “Anna Karenina,” it seemed like the once-reluctant Domhnall Gleeson finally became comfortable with being an actor.
Born in Dublin in the spring of 1983, Gleeson grew up watching his father, Brendan, leave behind a successful teaching career to pursue his love of acting. His initial protests of following in his footsteps died away when a particularly nervy speech, delivered while accepting an award on behalf of his father, landed him an agent. After studying media arts at the Dublin Institute of Technology, Gleeson made his acting debut in 2001’s “Rebel Heart,” a BBC miniseries about Ireland’s struggle for independence. He balanced the occasional film and TV appearance with long stretches on stage in both London’s West End and New York’s Broadway, and in 2006 earned a Tony nomination for his lead role as Davey in the violently political “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.”
But every high has a low and Gleeson was determined to create his own opportunities when none were being offered. In 2009 he wrote and directed the short film “What Will Survive of Us,” before joining “Your Bad Self” in 2010 as a writer and lead actor. His hard work paid off that year when he appeared in a trio of high-profile films: first as the eldest Weasley brother in the opening half of the Harry Potter franchise’s final installment; then as a restless clone in the adaptation of “Never Let Me Go;” and finally as an unlucky gunslinger in the Coen Brothers’ critically acclaimed western, “True Grit.” After reprising his role in the 2011 finale to the Harry Potter series, Gleeson re-united with two of his “Never Let Me Go” co-stars in 2012: Andrea Riseborough and Keira Knightley. In “Shadow Dancer” he portrayed an IRA member who’s suspicious his that sister (Riseborough) has been flipped; and in the Russian epic “Anna Karenina,” starring Knightley as the title aristocrat, he played the anxious landowner, Konstantin Levin. He next starred opposite Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy in the Richard Curtis time-travel romantic comedy-drama “About Time” (2013). This mainstream film was followed by a quirkier role opposite Michael Fassbender (wearing a giant papier-mache cartoon head) in “Frank” (2014), a Sundance favorite inspired by the life of Chris Sievey, a British post-punk musician who created a cartoon alter ego named Frank Sidebottom.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Sinead Cusack was born in 1948 in Dalkey in Co. Dublin. She is the daughter of actors Maureen & Cyril Cusack. She has a steller career on the stage. Her film credits include “Hoffman” opposite Peter Sellers in 1980, “Waterland” opposite her husband Jeremy Irons in 1992 and in 2006 John Boorman’s “The Tiger’s Tail” opposite Brendan Gleeson and Kim Catrell
TCM Overview:
This petite blonde stage-trained Irish actress is best-known for her work on the London stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Royal Court Theatre. The daughter of noted actor Cyril Cusack, she began her professional career at the famed Abbey Theater of Dublin. In the late 1960s, Cusack moved to London and soon thereafter began her collaboration with the RSC. She also made her feature debut with a small part in Clive Donner’s “Alfred the Great” (1969). The next year, she starred opposite Peter Sellers in the small comedy “Hoffman” but for the better part of the next two decades, she concentrated on working in the theater.
Cusack has played leading Shakespearean roles in RSC and Royal Court productions of “Macbeth” (as Lady Macbeth), “The Taming of the Shrew” (as Kate) and “The Merchant of Venice” (as Portia). In 1984, she made her Broadway debut opposite Derek Jacobi in the repertory productions of “Much Ado About Nothing” (as Beatrice) and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (as Roxanne), earning a Tony nomination for her work in the former. Six years later, she returned to London’s West End for an acclaimed production of “The Three Sisters”, co-starring her father and her sisters Sorcha and Niamh.
Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters
In the late 1980s, Cusack resumed her big screen career and has co-starred in a handful of mostly European-made features. Her American films have included “Rocket Gibraltar” and “Dublin Murders” (both 1988), while her other credits have included the fantasies “Venus Peter” (1989), “Waterland” (1992) with her husband Jeremy Irons, Les Blair’s comedy “Bad Behaviour” (1993), opposite Stephen Rea, and the dramas “The Cement Garden” (1993) and “The Nephew” (lensed 1996). In Italy, she co-starred with Vanessa Redgrave and Johnathon Schaech in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Sparrow” (1993) and again teamed with her Irons and Liv Tyler in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty” (1996).
Cusack made her TV debut in 1970 playing Emily to her father’s Barkis in a British production of “David Copperfield”. She went to appear in several British-made TV-movies, including the thriller “The Eyes Have It” (1974), two “Quiller” mysteries, “Night of the Father” and “Price of Violence” (both 1975), in which she was cast as a detective’s right-hand, “Twelfth Night” (1980), as Olivia, and “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1994), as Roxanne.
She and Irons both played supporting roles to Rosemary Harris’ George Sand in the multi-part biography “Notorious Woman” (PBS, 1975) and “Tales from Hollywood” (PBS, 1992). More recently, Cusack was seen opposite Alan Bates in the BBC mystery “Oliver’s Travels” (1996).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Charles Lawson plays the part of Jim McDonald in “Coronation Street” so he does. He has been playing the role since 1989. He was born in Belfast in 1959. In 1982 he had a featured role in the terrific series “Harry’s Game”. His first film role was in “Ascendancy” in 1983. Other films include “Four Days in July”, “Up Line” and TV series like “Boon”, “Dalziel & Pascoe”, “Holby City” and “Casualty”.
Aoife Mulholland was born in 1978 in Galway. On the London stage she starred as Roxie Hart in the muscial “Chicago” and as Maria Von Trapp in “The Sound of Music”. She was featured in the film “Malicious Intent”. Her “Wikipedia” entry can be accessed here.
Fionnuala Elwood was born in 1964 in Dublin. One of her first major acting roles was in “Prime Suspect” in 1991 on television. Other roles include nine years in “Emmerdale Farm” and roles in such shows as “Coronation Street” and “Casualty”.
Eva Birthistle was born in Dublin in 1974. In 1983 she was featured as a child in the popular Irish television series “Glenroe”. Her films include “Making Ends Meet”, “Red Rum”, “Borstal Boy” , “Ae Fond Kiss” directed by Ken Loach and “Breakfast at Pluto” directed by Neil Jordan. She recently played Sarah Cavandish in the popular TV drama “Waking the Dead”.
Arie Verveen was born in Ireland in 1966. He made his film debut in “Clouds of Magellan” in 1995. Other films include “The Thin Red Line”, “The Journeyman” and “Briar Patch”. He plays Liam O’Neill in the popular biker television series “Sons of Anarchy”.
IMDB entry:
Arie Verveen’s first lead role in a feature film, was Caught (1996), opposite Edward James Olmos and Maria Conchita Alonso and directed by acclaimed indie director Robert M. Young, for which he received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination, a Golden Satellite Award, and notable critical acclaim, for his performance. Arie first experimented with the idea of acting while living in London Town. He was intrigued by the illusions created in such Tennessee Williams plays, as ‘Orpheus Descending’, ‘Camino Real’ and ‘Talk To Me Like The Rain And Let Me Listen’… Verveen’s London stage debut was a production of ‘A Hatful Of Rain’ by Michael V. Gazzo which he co-produced and starred in. Shortly thereafter he visited New York City with film in mind. After contributing time at the famed Actors Studio on a volunteer basis he was asked to take over the day to day running of the Studio. He committed to this position for a six month period assistingArthur Penn. During this period he also contributed to several student and independent films. Fulfillment of his Actors Studio commitment coincided with him being cast inCaught (1996).
Arie Verveen is being directed by Lou Diamond Phillips in (Tao Of Surfing), which wraps in October. He recently worked (Sons Of Anarchy) and the action feature, (Fire With Fire). Verveen’s accomplished list of movies and directors he has collaborated with include Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line), Robert Rodriguez – Frank Miller (Sin City), Guy Ritchie (Suspect), Eli Roth (Cabin Fever), Sergei Bodrov (Running Free) and Robert M. Young (Caught). He has received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination, a Golden Satellite Award and notable critical acclaim, for his work.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Shane Richie was born in 1964 in London to Irish parents. He began his career in comedy but then also began to do straight acting. He has played Alfie Moon in “Eastenders”. He has also starred in insuch TV series as “Skins”, “The Good Samaratian” and “Father Frank”.
Shaun Glenville was born in Dublin in 1884. He made two films in 1940, “Jailbirds” and “Dr O’Dowd” with Patricia Roc and Peggy Cummins. He was the father of actor/director Peter Glenville. He died in London in 1968.
Few British actors of recent years have been held in as much affection as Sir John Hurt, who has died aged 77. That affection is not just because of his unruly lifestyle – he was a hell-raising chum of Oliver Reed, Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris, and was married four times – or even his string of performances as damaged, frail or vulnerable characters, though that was certainly a factor. There was something about his innocence, open-heartedness and his beautiful speaking voice that made him instantly attractive.
As he aged, his face developed more creases and folds than the old map of the Indies, inviting comparisons with the famous “lived-in” faces of WH Auden and Samuel Beckett, in whose reminiscent Krapp’s Last Tape he gave a definitive solo performance towards the end of his career. One critic said he could pack a whole emotional universe into the twitch of an eyebrow, a sardonic slackening of the mouth. Hurt himself said: “What I am now, the man, the actor, is a blend of all that has happened.”
For theatregoers of my generation, his pulverising, hysterically funny performance as Malcolm Scrawdyke, leader of the Party of Dynamic Erection at a Yorkshire art college, in David Halliwell’s Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, was a totemic performance of the mid-1960s; another was David Warner’s Hamlet, and both actors appeared in the 1974 film version of Little Malcolm. The play lasted only two weeks at the Garrick Theatre (I saw the final Saturday matinée), but Hurt’s performance was already a minor cult, and one collected by the Beatles and Laurence Olivier.
He became an overnight sensation with the public at large as Quentin Crisp – the self-confessed “stately homo of England” – in the 1975 television film The Naked Civil Servant, directed by Jack Gold, playing the outrageous, original and defiant aesthete whom Hurt had first encountered as a nude model in his painting classes at St Martin’s School of Art, before he trained as an actor.
John Hurt
Crisp called Hurt “my representative here on Earth”, ironically claiming a divinity at odds with his low-life louche-ness and poverty. But Hurt, a radiant vision of ginger quiffs and curls, with a voice kippered in gin and as studiously inflected as a deadpan mix of Noël Coward, Coral Browne and Julian Clary, in a way propelled Crisp to the stars, and certainly to his transatlantic fame, a journey summarised when Hurt recapped Crisp’s life in An Englishman in New York (2009), 10 years after his death.
Hurt said some people had advised him that playing Crisp would end his career. Instead, it made everything possible. Within five years he had appeared in four of the most extraordinary films of the late 1970s: Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), the brilliantly acted sci-fi horror movie in which Hurt – from whose stomach the creature exploded – was the first victim; Alan Parker’s Midnight Express, for which he won his first Bafta award as a drug-addicted convict in a Turkish torture prison; Michael Cimino’s controversial western Heaven’s Gate (1980), now a cult classic in its fully restored format; and David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), with Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft.
In the last-named, as John Merrick, the deformed circus attraction who becomes a celebrity in Victorian society and medicine, Hurt won a second Bafta award and Lynch’s opinion that he was “the greatest actor in the world”. He infused a hideous outer appearance – there were 27 moving pieces in his face mask; he spent nine hours a day in make-up – with a deeply moving, humane quality. He followed up with a small role – Jesus – in Mel Brooks’s History of the World: Part 1 (1981), the movie where the waiter at the Last Supper says, “Are you all together, or is it separate checks?”
Hurt was an actor freed of all convention in his choice of roles, and he lived his life accordingly. Born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, he was the youngest of three children of a Church of England vicar and mathematician, the Reverend Arnould Herbert Hurt, and his wife, Phyllis (née Massey), an engineer with an enthusiasm for amateur dramatics.
After a miserable schooling at St Michael’s in Sevenoaks, Kent (where he said he was sexually abused), and the Lincoln grammar school (where he played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest), he rebelled as an art student, first at the Grimsby art school where, in 1959, he won a scholarship to St Martin’s, before training at Rada for two years from 1960.
He made a stage debut that same year with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts, playing a semi-psychotic teenage thug in Fred Watson’s Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger and then joined the cast of Arnold Wesker’s national service play, Chips With Everything, at the Vaudeville. Still at the Arts, he was Len in Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs (1963) before playing the title role in John Wilson’s Hamp (1964) at the Edinburgh Festival, where the critic Caryl Brahms noted his unusual ability and “blessed quality of simplicity”.
John Hurt
This was a more relaxed, free-spirited time in the theatre. Hurt recalled rehearsing with Pinter when silver salvers stacked with gins and tonics, ice and lemon, would arrive at 11.30 each morning as part of the stage management routine. On receiving a rude notice from the distinguished Daily Mail critic Peter Lewis, he wrote, “Dear Mr Lewis, Whooooops! Yours sincerely, John Hurt” and received the reply, “Dear Mr Hurt, Thank you for short but tedious letter. Yours sincerely, Peter Lewis.”
After Little Malcolm, he played leading roles with the RSC at the Aldwych – notably in David Mercer’s Belcher’s Luck (1966) and as the madcap dadaist Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties (1974) – as well as Octavius in Shaw’s Man and Superman in Dublin in 1969 and an important 1972 revival of Pinter’s The Caretaker at the Mermaid. But his stage work over the next 10 years was virtually non-existent as he followed The Naked Civil Servant with another pyrotechnical television performance as Caligula in I, Claudius; Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and the Fool to Olivier’s King Lear in Michael Elliott’s 1983 television film.
His first big movie had been Fred Zinnemann’s A Man for All Seasons (1966) with Paul Scofield (Hurt played Richard Rich), but his first big screen performance was an unforgettable Timothy Evans, the innocent framed victim in Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place (1970), with Richard Attenborough as the sinister landlord and killer John Christie. He claimed to have made 150 movies and persisted in playing those he called “the unloved … people like us, the inside-out people, who live their lives as an experiment, not as a formula”. Even his Ben Gunn-like professor in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) fitted into this category, though not as resoundingly, perhaps, as his quivering Winston Smith in Michael Radford’s terrific Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984); or as a prissy weakling, Stephen Ward, in Michael Caton-Jones’s Scandal (1989), about the Profumo affair; or again as the lonely writer Giles De’Ath in Richard Kwietniowski’s Love and Death on Long Island.Advertisement
His later, sporadic theatre performances included a wonderful Trigorin in Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1985 (with Natasha Richardson as Nina); Turgenev’s incandescent idler Rakitin in a 1994 West End production by Bill Bryden of A Month in the Country, playing a superb duet with Helen Mirren’s Natalya Petrovna; and another memorable match with Penelope Wilton in Brian Friel’s exquisite 70-minute doodle Afterplay (2002), in which two lonely Chekhov characters – Andrei from Three Sisters, Sonya from Uncle Vanya – find mutual consolation in a Moscow café in the 1920s. The play originated, as did that late Krapp’s Last Tape, at the Gate theatre in Dublin.
His last screen work included, in the Harry Potter franchise, the first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), and last two, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts One and Two (2010, 2011), as the kindly wand-maker Mr Ollivander; Rowan Joffé’s 1960s remake of Brighton Rock (2010); and the 50th anniversary television edition of Dr Who (2013), playing a forgotten incarnation of the title character.
Because of his distinctive, virtuosic vocal attributes – was that what a brandy-injected fruitcake sounds like, or peanut butter spread thickly with a serrated knife? – he was always in demand for voiceover gigs in animated movies: the heroic rabbit leader, Hazel, in Watership Down (1978), Aragorn/Strider in Lord of the Rings (1978) and the Narrator in Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2004). In 2015 he took the Peter O’Toole stage role in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell for BBC Radio 4. He had foresworn alcohol for a few years – not for health reasons, he said, but because he was bored with it.
Hurt’s sister was a teacher in Australia, his brother a convert to Roman Catholicism and a monk and writer. After his first marriage to the actor Annette Robinson (1960, divorced 1962) he lived for 15 years in London with the French model Marie-Lise Volpeliere Pierrot. She died in a riding accident in 1983.
In 1984 he married, secondly, a Texan, Donna Peacock, living with her for a time in Nairobi until the relationship came under strain from his drinking: they divorced in 1990. With his third wife, Jo Dalton, whom he married in the same year, he had two sons, Nick and Alexander (“Sasha”); they divorced in 1995. In 2005 he married the actor and producer Anwen Rees-Myers, with whom he lived in Cromer, Norfolk. Hurt was made CBE in 2004, given a Bafta lifetime achievement award in 2012 and knighted in the New Year’s honours list of 2015.
Neil Morrissey was born in 1962 in Stafford to Irish parents. He and his brother were taken into care as children and in 2011, Neil Morrissey made a television documantary about his expereinces in children’s homes. His film debut was in 1984 in “The Bounty”. In the mid-80’s he came to national promincence as the biker Rocky in the popular television series “Boon”. He also had a major TV success with “Men Behaving Badly”. His “Wikipedia” entry here.
Victoria Smurfit was born in 1974 in Dublin. She made her television debut in “Ivanoe” as Rowena in 1997. Her other TV work includes “Ballykissangle” , “The Clinic” and “Trial and Retribution” where she played DCI Roisin Connor. Her films include “The Beach” and “About A Boy”.
Lisa Richard’s agency page:
Victoria recently appears as the role of Lady Jane in NBC’s new TV seriesDRACULA opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Due to her fabulous performance she has been nominated for an IFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Television for DRACULA..
Her film credits include About a Boy, The Leading Man, Bulletproof Monk, The Beach, So This is Romance? and The Last Great Wilderness. Victoria’s television credits include The Shell Seekers, directed by Piers Haggard, for ITV; Berkeley Square, The Alan Clark Diaries and Ivanhoe, all for the BBC; as well as leading roles in several iconic series, including Jane in Cold Feet, Orla in Ballykissangel and, most notably, DCI Roisin Connor in Trial and Retribution, the next series of which will be seen onITV in the New Year.
Her theatre performances include Maire in Brian Friel’s Translations at the Bristol Old Vic, The Jungle Book for the RSC, and Ten Rounds by Carlo Gebler at the Tricycle Theatre in London. Victoria most recently appeared on stage in Ireland for the first time as Carole in the hugely successful new play October by Fiona Looney produced by Landmark Productions at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin and Cork Opera House.
Victoria most recently appeared as series regular, Dr. Edel Swift in Season 7 of The Clinic for Parallel Films and RTE and as a guest lead in an episode of Marple (as Ella Blunt) for ITV. Victoria recently wrapped filming Honeymoon for One directed by Kevin Connor for Hallmark Channel.
Liam Cunningham was born in 1961 in Dublin. He originally trained as an electrican before taking to the boards. He made his feature film debut in 1992 in “Into the West” with Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin. His other films include “War of the Buttons”, “A Little Princess”, “Jude”, “A Love Divided”, “Showbands” and “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”.
2014 “Independent.ie” article:
The Game of Thrones star has featured in a number of projects with daring or dangerous stunts throughout his career.
And Cunningham (52), who portrays former smuggler Davos Seaworth in the smash-hit HBO drama, told the Herald that he has not left every job unscathed — he has experienced one or two close calls while working in front of the cameras.
“There are always going to be injuries on set — if you are doing things properly,” he said.
“I nearly got killed on a horse when I was filming in France with Clemence Posey a few years ago, where I had two swords attached to me and the horse reared up and I came down on my back; two inches either way and I would have lost a kidney and my life,” he revealed.
“You can only make stunts so safe.
“They are stunts — and it should be bordering on dangerous, because if it’s very safe it looks crap, so there needs to be a sense of danger.”
Even though he has a lead part in a global TV phenomenon, Cunningham — who launched the Westbury Hotel’s new Cafe Novo light breakfast menu yesterday — told this newspaper that he can’t afford to take on small budget theatre work.
“I can’t afford to do theatre, I think people assume if you’re on the television you’re a multi-millionaire.
“It’s HBO and cable, with a very big cast. It’s doing a network show where you make the money, but I’m much too lazy to do that — you have to give up your entire year.”
His co-star Trinity College graduate Jack Gleeson, who plays King Joffrey recently announced that he is looking to pursue a career in theatre production instead.
Cunningham commended the 21-year-old, and said that there are “few actors” who experience the level of success as Gleeson has.
The above “Independent.ie” article can also be accessed online here.
Denis Leary was born in Worchester, Massachusetts in 1957 of Irish parents who came from Killarney. He became a top flight comedy artist before branching into movies. Among his credits are the wonderful “The Ref” with Kevin Spacey and Glynis Johns in 1994, “Demolition Man” and “Suicide Kings”. He is also starring in the television drama series “Rescue Me”. He holds both US and Irish nationality.
TCM Overview:
Having made his mark as an angry man comedian in the early 1990s with a stand-up act that lambasted every aspect of popular culture, actor Denis Leary put his abrasive persona to good use when he made the transition to the screen. He first gained widespread notice with his fast-talking rants that were featured in between commercials on MTV. After achieving a minor hit in the music world with the sardonic 1993 single “Asshole,” Leary starred in the funny, but under-performing comedy “The Ref” (1994) before appearing in the cringe-worthy comedy “Operation Dumbo Drop” (1995). He delivered sturdy performances in uncharacteristically dramatic fare like “Love Walked In” (1997), “Monument Ave” (1998), “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1999) and “Jesus’ Son” (1999). Despite a series of uneven roles, Leary finally found his groove as the star, co-creator and executive producer of “Rescue Me” (FX, 2004-2011), a gritty and acerbically funny look at a group of fireman coping with their dysfunctional lives post-9/11. Irreverent, shocking and sometimes controversial, “Rescue Me” proved to be the perfect vehicle for Leary’s sardonic wit, playing a recovering alcoholic who struggles to keep together what’s left of his family while constantly battling his inner demons. Hailed by critics and blasted by some of the more overzealous watchdog groups, the show allowed Leary to put the full force of his talents on display while opening doors to more mainstream projects.
Denis Leary was born on Aug. 18, 1957, the second of four children of Irish immigrants, Jack and Nora Leary. He was raised in Worcester, MA, where his father was a mechanic and, by his own description, pretty much everyone in the neighborhood grew up to be a cop, firefighter, teamster or criminal. Leary first had his sights set on becoming a professional hockey player until a viewing of Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” (1973) altered his world view. He was so captivated by the realness of the characters onscreen, he decided he wanted to try acting. He became involved with community theater groups after graduating from St. Peter-Marion Catholic high school in 1975, then moved to Boston to study writing and theater at Emerson College. At Emerson, Leary fell in with other talented up-and-comers – including future stand-ups Steven Wright and Mario Cantone – and in 1976, he co-founded the Emerson Comedy Workshop, a writing and performing group that survives today. He appeared in sketch comedy shows and one-act plays, eventually wanting to try stand-up comedy. At the time, Boston had a thriving local comedy scene that launched the careers of Lenny Clarke, Colin Quinn, Paula Poundstone, Wright and Cantone. In addition to schoolwork and Emerson productions and hosting his own stand-up night at the club Play it Again Sam’s, Leary also formed a band with musicians from the Comedy Workshop. The group performed comical songs that would become a trademark of Leary’s eventual breakout.
Following his graduation in 1979, Leary was offered a job teaching comedy writing at his alma mater. He stayed in Boston another five years; long enough to work up solid stand-up material and marry one of his students, writer Ann Lembeck. The pair eventually moved to New York City, where Leary began to break into the city’s standup scene and land writing work. In one of his earlier gigs, Leary was a writer and performer on MTV’s Colin Quinn-hosted game show “Remote Control” (1987-1990), where Leary made walk-on appearances as Andy Warhol and a lion tamer with a kitten, among others. In London, he served as host of the “London Underground” TV variety show and while he was there he debuted his one-man show “No Cure for Cancer” at the Edinburgh International Arts Festival. His performance swept the Critic’s Award and established Leary’s onstage persona as an angry, chain smoking, cynical social observer preoccupied with red meat, death and rock ‘n’ roll. He expounded on such issues as smoking (“I’m going to get a tracheotomy so I can smoke two cigarettes at the same time”) to pop stars (“Sting – he wants to save the seals, he wants to save the rain forests…how about saving your hair, OK, pal?”). The show landed a sold-out run on London’s famed West End and the Learys returned to New York and a four-month run off-Broadway.
MTV tapped Leary’s rebellious attitude for a series of image spots and he became an instant icon of the era, pacing back and forth in a black leather jacket in a squalid urban setting, smoking furiously, and ranting about everything from Cindy Crawford to the hypocrisy of “political correctness.” “No Cure for Cancer” was aired on Showtime in 1992 and released as an album in 1993, spawning a single and music video for “Asshole,” Leary’s searing musical ode to the “average Joe” living the American consumerists’ self-centered dream. Leary’s instant fame had its detractors, however. Following the widespread popularity of “No Cure for Cancer,” comedy insiders stepped forward to accuse Leary of plagiarizing from similarly angry, nicotine-addicted Bill Hicks. There were claims that Leary not only used some of the comedian’s material verbatim but also co-opted his stage persona. Hicks remained relatively unknown when he died of cancer in 1994 which further enraged accusers who believed Leary had shot to fame based on someone else’s material.
Leary’s MTV work led to product endorsements for Nike, and naturally the acting offers began to come in. The year 1993 found him appearing in nearly half a dozen films, where the 6’3″ blond was generally limited to comic cameos (“National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1”), evil heavies (“Judgment Night”), and regular guys (“The Sandlot”). In 1994 he began a long-term association with budding young director Ted Demme, who cast him as a burglar trapped in a house with dysfunctional hostages in “The Ref” (1994). The black comedy was a perfect vehicle for Leary, while his follow-up “Operation Dumbo Drop” (1995) was historically unsuccessful. Leary teamed with wife Lembeck to collaborate on the story for “Two If By Sea” (1996), but sadly the romantic comedy co-starring Sandra Bullock was also a bomb. Leary and Lembeck teamed up again for the “Lust” segment of “National Lampoon’s Favorite Deadly Sins” (Showtime, 1996), earning a CableACE Award for the short written by Lembeck and directed by Leary. The coffee and cigarettes kept Leary going full speed, and in 1997, he acted in five films – including the forgettable titles “The Matchmaker” and “Love Walked In” – as well as the mildly successful political satire “Wag the Dog” with Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman.
In 1997 Leary finally taped his second stand-up show, “Denis Leary: Lock ‘n’ Load” (HBO), where no one was safe from his acid wit, least of all, O.J. Simpson. (“I hope your kids pull a Menendez on you, O.J. And they’ll be forgiven, 10 times over.”) Big screen offers in the family comedy “Wide Awake” (1998) and “Small Soldiers” (1998) kept his profile high and his bank account full, but still failed to capitalize on Leary’s creative talents. He decided it was time to start his own production company. Apostle, he hoped, would help him gain more creative control over projects and expand his options as an actor and writer. He reunited with Demme to co-produce and star in “Monument Ave” (1998), a dark drama about the Irish mob set in Charlestown, MA, which opened to favorable reviews (under the original title “Snitch”) at the Sundance Film Festival. He went on to enjoy a scene-stealing supporting role in the remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1999), with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, and earned a Blockbuster Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also gave a powerful, understated performance as a working class alcoholic down on his luck in the indie “Jesus’ Son” (1999), which was one of the top critic’s picks of the year.
In December of 1999, news came from home that Leary’s cousin Jerry Lucey and his childhood friend Tommy Spencer – both firefighters – had been killed in a savage warehouse blaze in Worcester. In response, he formed the Leary Firefighters Foundation to raise money for survivors of firefighters killed in the line of duty and help supply necessary training and equipment for local fire departments. Perhaps as a tribute, Leary played a firefighter in the David Mamet adaptation “Lakeboat” (2000), before putting features on hold and launching a new phase of his career.
In 2001, Leary debuted “The Job” (ABC, 2001-02), a half hour, single-camera police dramedy co-created with Peter Tolan. Leary starred as the wise-ass, straight shooting, and believably flawed detective Mike McNeil in the standout series, which he also wrote and produced. Despite critical raves, ABC executives seemed unsure what to do with the project and eventually cancelled it, but with all Leary had learned about TV production, he was hungry to take a second crack at it. Meanwhile, the staggering number of firefighting deaths resulting from September 11th prompted him to form The Fund for New York’s Bravest, an offshoot of the Leary Firefighters Foundation devoted to the needs of New York firefighters and their families. While co-developing his next television project with Tolan, Leary appeared in the 2002 crime drama “Bad Boy” and the well-received indie “The Secret Lives of Dentists” (2002), playing a patient of dentist Campbell Scott who becomes the voice of his paranoia. He also voiced saber-toothed tiger Diego in the hit CGI-animated film “Ice Age” (2002).
Leary was finally able to combine his long-time loyalty towards firefighters with his writing and acting talent in the co-creation of “Rescue Me.” The hour-long drama/comedy hybrid starred Leary as Tommy Gavin, a seemingly fearless and tough-as-nails New York firefighter battling alcoholism, the disintegration of his marriage and family, and hallucinations of his firefighting cousin who died on September 11th. An outstanding ensemble cast represented several generations of hard-living blue collar workers daily surviving intense drama with ball-busting wit. Fortunately the show was picked up by edgy cable network FX, which allowed the raunchy firehouse talk and often controversial situations so crucial to its gritty realism to remain intact.
With “Rescue Me,” Leary finally proved that when given the chance to follow his vision, his work was top notch. In 2005, he was nominated for a Best Performance Golden Globe Award. Leary was also nominated for an Outstanding Writing Emmy in 2005 and Outstanding Lead Actor Emmys in 2006 and 2007. Meanwhile, he was a significant player in a strong ensemble cast in “Recount” (HBO, 2008), a made-for-television movie the depicted the behind-the-scenes action during the month-long election fiasco between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Leary played Democratic consultant and strategist, Michael Whouley, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a series, movie or miniseries. Meanwhile, Leary unsurprisingly generated some controversy after the release of his book, Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid (2008), in which he called autistic children “dumb-ass kids,” “morons,” “stupid” and “lazy.” Leary claimed he was taken out of context, saying that he was commenting on the over-diagnosis of autistic children, though he did later publicly apologize. After reprising Diego the saber-toothed tiger for “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (2009), Leary embarked on his first stand-up tour in 12 years, headlining the “Rescue Me Comedy Tour” in Atlantic City, NJ, with co-stars Lenny Clarke and Adam Ferrera. Meanwhile, the show itself aired its seventh and final season in 2011, ending Leary’s most popular and accomplished project to date.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Tina Hobley was born in 1972 in Mill Hill, London. She is currently in BBC”s “Holby City”. Between 1996 and 1998 she was in “Coronation Street”.
“Female First” Interview from 2013:
The big news was announced a few weeks ago that you’re quitting Holby City, how hard of a decision was that to make?
After more than 12 years on Holby it was always going to be an incredibly difficult decision, but I am so excited to see what the future holds for me.
What are you looking to do after you finish filming in September?
I’m looking to have a little bit of fun, a little bit of variety of work and new projects and maybe some travel.
What sort of roles would you like to try?
The reason I am branching out is to explore all avenues, so whether that’s a bit of theatre, film, presenting, we’ll see what the future holds
With such a busy schedule how do you manage to stay in such great shape?
I don’t like the gym, but I love yoga because it combines relaxation and strengthening work so I squeeze that in whenever I can. I’m a firm believer in everything in moderation.
What’s your favourite workouts?
Any form of yoga I’ll try! I’m looking forward to being able to do more of that.
Do you follow a strict diet?
No, not at all, it’s always everything in moderation. I try to be good Monday to Wednesday, and then treat myself towards the end of the week.
Summer holidays are fast approaching, how to do you ensure you’re ready for the beach?
I try to get a few yoga classes in and try to cut down on the carbs before I go.
Tina Hobley is working with Sorelle, a 0% alcohol wine-style drink, to help women get summer ready – @Sorelledrink/ Facebook.com/Sorelledrink
by Taryn Davies for www.femalefirst.co.uk
The above “Female First” interview can also be accessed on line here.
Ben Keaton was born in Dublin in 1957. He starred in “Casualty” between 1999 and 2002. He also appeared in the cult TV classic “Fr Ted”. Films include “East Is East” and “Double Time”.
Keaton is also a well established actor in the theatre, and has appeared at The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester in Animal Crackers, American Buffalo, Harvey, Cyrano de Bergerac,[1] and playing the role of David Bliss in Noel Coward’s Hay Fever.[2] Keaton also works as a comedian, and has won the Perrier Comedy Award at the 1986 Edinburgh Festival,[3] two Manchester Evening News Best Actor Awards and a Laurence Olivier Nomination. He is a regular guest member with the Comedy Store Players,[1] the Steve Frost Improv All Stars and Eddie Izzard, and appeared in this style of comedy at the Royal Exchange in his show “Ben & Friends” which has included Stephen Frost, Niall Ashdown,Steve Steen, Andy Smart, Brian Conley and Paul Merton.
Ninette de Valois was born in Blessington, Co. Wicklow in 1898. Her birth name was Edris Stannus. She established the Royal Ballet in London. She died in 2001 at the age of 102.
On July 13 1996, just before the Royal Ballet School’s annual matinée at Covent Garden was about to begin, applause suddenly erupted from one side of the auditorium. “It must be Madam,” said those of us who could not see her, and everyone spontaneously rose to applaud the fragile, white-haired figure who had been wheeled to her place at the side of the stalls circle.Madam it was. Dame Ninette de Valois, who has died aged 102, had made it, as she had made it almost every year, to see the student dancers who would carry forward the work she had started so many years ago – the tiny enterprise that was to grow into the whole edifice of the Royal Ballet and its school.
Earlier that year, on February 20, she had made it to Covent Garden for the 50th anniversary of the reopening of the Royal Opera House in 1946 with her company’s production of The Sleeping Beauty. And she had come on stage for a standing ovation, led by the Queen from the royal box.
She was also at Sadler’s Wells that year for the final gala there, before the demolition of the theatre where her company had started. Far from being sentimental or nostalgic, Dame Ninette, although she never ceased to recognise the vital part which that theatre, thanks to Lilian Baylis, had played in the foundation of British ballet, knew it was time for rebuilding and lent her blessing to the enterprise. She had also travelled on a special train, at the age of 92, to celebrate the relocation of the then Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet to Birmingham when it was time for that company to move on and become the Birmingham Royal Ballet of today. She took a great interest in the reopening of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in October 1998, and of the Royal Opera House in November 1999.
Characteristically, she spent her 100th birthday at White Lodge in Richmond Park, the junior school of the Royal Ballet, still mentally alert to all that was going on and applauding, as always, the young dancers of the future. For, as she once wrote, “The work has not been thought out just for the present but for those days, months and years that go to make up the future. In brief there has been planted for you a true heritage. It is your duty to protect this gift – and see that it lives and expands.” The gift, of course, was the Royal Ballet.
The Royal Ballet was Dame Ninette de Valois’s ballet, the Royal Ballet School her school. So she regarded them; and no one disagreed. Without her the 20th-century history of ballet in these islands would have been entirely different. Dame Ninette made British ballet. She had lieutenants, of course, but the generalship was hers, and she alone, in the formative years, was irreplaceable.
Latterly she could not scrutinise, all the time, the working of both London and Birmingham companies and the school; but her occasional visitations, her questions and whiplash criticism never ceased to matter greatly. She always aroused awe in those, especially the women, who worked under her. To the last it was Madam’s approval that blessed, and her disapproval that damned, a budding project.
At any time in her long career, “indomitable” was one of the right adjectives for her, especially in the last decades of her life, when she refused to give in to the arthritis and other ailments that increasingly afflicted her. She was constantly in demand and was obdurately conscientious in meeting that demand.
Hindsight may tell us now that in the 1920s Britain was, at last, due for its turn as a centre of ballet. The Diaghilev company, known in London since 1911, had made a particularly big impression here. So had Pavlova. British dancers – Sokolova, Markova, Dolin, De Valois herself – were beginning to be noticeable among Diaghilev’s exalted Russians. But this was also a time when the French title worn by Diaghilev’s organisation, Les Ballets Russes, was a pertinent reminder that these exiled Russians had made their artistic home in France, where the tradition of ballet long outdated even the Russian one.
It would have been a rare prophet who, at that time, could tell that an enduring consequence of this gorgeous Franco-Russian marriage would be the determination of a young, rather solitary Irish dancer that such delights should be made possible in Britain too.
De Valois was born Edris Stannus at Baltiboys, a country house some two miles from the village of Blessington in County Wicklow, and always insisted, like WB Yeats, with whom she worked, “I am of Ireland.” Irish she was, by birth and temperament, but it was to England – like the Polish Marie Rambert – that she gave her life. Her first dance was an authentic Irish jig, taught to her by the family cook, Kate, to perform on the stone floor of the kitchen at Baltiboys. Did that jig, which she “adored”, instil in her the passionate understanding of native dances of the British Isles that she was, much later, to introduce with such sensible determination to the curriculum of the Royal Ballet School?
By the age of 11, the family had moved to London and she learned “fancy dancing” from the fashionable Mrs Wordsworth, and then more professional exercises at the Lila Field Academy. Halfway through her 14th year she was on tour with the “Wonder Children” from that academy, had learned the Dying Swan from having seen Pavlova, and claimed to have danced it – sometimes with encore – “on the end of every pier in England”.
But she realised that more serious training in classical ballet was necessary and went to Edouard Espinosa for classes. She became principal dancer in pantomimes at the Lyceum and in opera ballets at Covent Garden; took classes alongside Diaghilev’s dancers in London with Maestro Cecchetti; and became friends with Lydia Lopokova and Léonide Massine, with whose small company, in 1921, she had her first taste of working with Russians.
Already moves were afoot to establish a British national ballet and De Valois, with her usual good sense and foresight, realised that the only way to learn how to run a ballet repertory company was to join one. She went straight for the best and joined, unconditionally as a member of the corps de ballet, Diaghilev’s company. She was there from 1923 to 1925, and returned briefly in 1926. She danced and created solo roles in ballets by Massine and Nijinska; she learned about company procedure, choreography and, from her studies with Cecchetti and Nicholas Legat, the classic, academic dance.
In 1926 she opened her own school, grandly called the Academy of Choreographic Art, and that same year had her now celebrated interview with Lilian Baylis of the Old Vic. Baylis “liked her face”, liked her long-term plans for the establishment of a school and company – and the fact that she was not asking for any money. She offered work with her actors and singers at the Vic – “£l a week, dear, for the teaching, £2 for arranging a short dance per show” – and a carrot. She was planning to rebuild the derelict Sadler’s Wells Theatre, which would offer space for an embryonic ballet company. De Valois accepted her terms and never wavered in her gratitude for the faith Baylis had in her and for the support she gave.
In the years of waiting for the reopening of Sadler’s Wells, De Valois busied herself not only with her school but in working with Yeats at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and with Terence Gray at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge. She was also creating her first choreographies, so that when the time came to close her school and move it into Sadler’s Wells she had a nucleus of small ballets on which to build. With but one or two performances a week, and very few dancers, she had little else on which to build. But she had the immense good fortune of securing, right from the start, the services of Constant Lambert as musical director and, as invaluable guests, Markova and Dolin. It was Dolin’s performance as Satan in Job and Markova’s Giselle that really launched the company.
In 1935, when Markova left, De Valois dared, very riskily as it seemed, to make a ballerina of the adolescent Margot Fonteyn. She introduced the great classics, one by one, into the repertory and, there being no more adequate choreographer immediately in sight, she set about supplementing the classics with a British repertory.
Of her own choreography she was the toughest of critics, yet she was responsible for making much of that early repertory very British in character. She drew on artists such as Blake, Hogarth and Rowlandson for inspiration and decor, and British compositions old and new, guided by Lambert, for music. Once Frederick Ashton joined her in 1935 as chief choreographer, she was content to delegate much of the choreographic task to him, and in all the postwar years made only one ballet for her company, the unmemorable Don Quixote – to the Roberto Gerhard score. Yet three of her principal prewar works have lived on: Job – made for the Camargo Society, that curtain-raiser to the Vic-Wells company – The Rake’s Progress and Checkmate. They have lived because they are well-constructed and distinctively British items in an increasingly Catholic repertory.
From 1931 until her retirement from the directorship in 1963, Madam’s biography is that of her company, although she allowed, in her enchanting autobiography Come Dance With Me (1957), “a glimpse of the private side of someone’s public life”. It seems in retrospect a story of regally calm progress, but it had its challenges and its crises. Until 1939 there was the formidable rivalry of De Basil’s and later Massine’s big touring organisations, which had inherited so much of Diaghilev’s repertory and talent and came, every summer, to the big theatres of the West End, reducing the enterprise at Sadler’s Wells to pygmy size. Yet, even before the war scattered them, these Ballet Russe companies were disintegrating. They had no homes; no Diaghilevs to bind them.
During the war the Sadler’s Wells company became homeless – and was nearly stranded in Holland by the German invasion. Temporary residence was found at the New (now Albery) Theatre; nationwide touring became necessary; the loss of male dancers to the armed forces was, somehow, surmounted. The momentous step of accepting the invitation to reopen the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, implying recognition of national status, followed in 1946. Perhaps the company was not quite ready. But largely through the new, sumptuous staging of The Sleeping Beauty (supervised by De Valois), it quickly acquired the strength to fit a bigger role. Then came the first visit to the United States in 1949; again a risk, again a triumph.
By 1956, the infant Vic-Wells Ballet had gained its Royal Charter – through a brilliantly argued submission written by De Valois – which safely united both companies and their schools under their Royal name. The Royal Ballet had become a setter of international standards, a provider of dancers, choreographers and ballet masters for all save the eastern bloc. And even in that world it proved its quality on its first visit to Moscow and Leningrad in 1961.
Meanwhile, the school had expanded into a full-time educational establishment, and when Madam retired from the company in 1963, it was to the school that she devoted her scarcely abated energy.
In addition to her work building a national ballet, Dame Ninette lived a happy parallel life as the wife of Dr AB Connell, whom she married in 1935 (he died in 1987). It was an exemplary union of volatility and calm. While Dr Connell practised at Sunningdale, she was known locally simply as “the doctor’s wife”, for she was as efficient and charming in running a household (she was an excellent cook) and in dealing with telephone messages for the doctor as she was in running her company.
She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1957 and a Companion of Honour in 1982, and was awarded the ultimate honour, the Order of Merit, in 1992, receiving in the same year the special award of the Society of West End Theatres for her lifetime’s achievement. In addition, there were innumerable honorary degrees and decorations, accepted not so much for herself as in recognition of “the company”.
Lilian Baylis was not alone in “liking her face”. When young she was very pretty and a piquant, accomplished dancer. Her eyes were large and her facial bone structure was fine; she had the sort of young good looks that age enhanced.
Her manner was unobtrusive to the point of shyness and her conversation was a voluble flurry. She had many advisers, to none of whom she seemed to listen; her views were always strong, sometimes ruthless and, from day to day, self-contradictory. She had a persuasive charm that was almost irresistible and very seldom resisted. It was totally unforced, full of fun and humour.
Her great strength lay in her integrity, her complete lack of interest in getting rich – she never did – or in acquiring glory for herself. In her final years, past achievements mattered less and less to her; she looked urgently, impatiently, to the future, concerned only with what “her” ballet was going to become. Her colleagues, her dancers – her children, as they could not help regarding themselves – loved her, especially towards the end when she needed them most. They knew that without her they, the two companies, the school, the whole of British ballet with its reputation built over half a century, would not be here.
On her 100th birthday at White Lodge she was surrounded by the children she loved, especially the small boys. It was a beautiful day and she turned to one of her former colleagues, looked up at the sky and said: “I don’t see how anything up there can be as beautiful as this.”
Ninette de Valois (Edris Stannus), ballerina, choreographer, ballet company director and teacher, born June 6 1898; died March 8 2001
The late James Monahan (the Guardian’s former ballet critic, James Kennedy) took charge of the Royal Ballet School at the end of a long career in journalism and at the BBC World Service. He died in 1985.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Dylan Moran was born in Navan, Co. Meath in 1971. He has won critical acclaim for his comedy shows. His films include “Notting Hill” in 1999, “The Actors” with Michael Caine, “Shaun of the Dead”, and “A Film With Me In It”.
IMDB entry:
Irish comedian Dylan Moran was born in Navan, County Meath in 1971. Leaving school without any qualifications at age 16, Moran quickly became attracted to stand-up comedy and debuted, in 1992, at a comedy club in Dublin, The Comedy Cellar. A year later, he won the Channel Four comedy newcomer’s “So You Think You’re Funny” award at the Edinburgh Festival, and began developing his comedy routines into a one-man show, “Gurgling for Money”, for which he won the prestigious Perrier Comedy Award in 1996, and which he subsequently took to a nationwide tour of the UK. His exposure at the Edinburgh Festival also led to him getting programmed at international stand-up comedy festivals, worldwide.
Subsequently, Moran took to writing and performing for British television. He has starred in the BBC sitcom, How Do You Want Me? (1998), and – more importantly – in 2000, he was commissioned by Channel Four for the sitcom, Black Books (2000). He wrote and starred in three 6-episode series of this comedy. Co-starring popular British stand-up comedian Bill Bailey, who was nominated for the Perrier Award the year Moran won, Black Books (2000) sees Moran play a character close to his stand-up comedy persona: an unsociable misanthrope, reminiscent of the John Cleese sitcom character, “Basil Fawlty”, that shares a great love of wine with one of razor-sharp put-downs of all things human. Also, his character Bernard Black’s often surreal views on everyday things and on human behavior is close to his stand-up persona’s dealing with them.
The same year the first series of “Black Books” aired, Moran took his one-man show, “Ready, Steady, Cough”, on a UK tour, followed two years later by Dylan Moran: Monster(2004). This was followed by Monster II in 2004.
Moran’s live stand-up comedy is unique in that it merges two strands of stand-up that seemed incompatible for a long time: sharp observational humor, and surreal and fantastical language-based absurdity. On the one hand, he has a clear influence from what could be called an American school of stand-up comedy that is heavily observational. On the other hand, Moran’s comedy is characterized by a use of language similar to the stand-up comedy of Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble: surreal associative leaps between on the one side observations and on the other fantasies, verbally painting bizarre and absurd worlds, often through a use of stream-of-consciousness narration. His language is often highly poetic, resembling a James Joyce that has had one too many. – IMDb Mini Biography By: Teun van der Sluijs
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
A.J. Buckley was born in Dublin in 1978. When he was six, his parents emigrated to Canada. He was featured in the 1998 film “Disturbing Behaviour” and he stars as Adam Ross in the television series “CSI:NY”.
Interview in “Calgary Herald”:
f you didn’t realize that A.J. Buckley is on this season of Justified, don’t feel bad: the actor’s own mother didn’t recognize him when she walked past him at the airport.
Best known for playing lab nerd Adam Ross on CSI: NY, Buckley physically transformed himself so he wouldn’t be typecast by his eight years on the popular TV series after it was cancelled last year.
“I trained my ass off. I put on 45 pounds. I am really big. I’m up to 197 pounds,” Buckley says of the seven months he spent in the gym preparing for his role in North of Hell, a feature film with Katherine Heigl and Patrick Wilson. (Buckley is also a producer on the project.) “I was training twice a day with no cardio, all power lifting.”
And viewers can see the results on this week’s episode of Justified.
“I am pretty much buck naked. You’ll get to see my whole world on Tuesday,” Buckley says, laughing. “It was cold that day. That’s all I have to say.”
The Irish-born, Vancouver-raised actor plays Danny Crowe, a “romantic sociopath,” on Justified. His murder of Crowes imposes on kin back in Harlan County, Kentucky, when their criminal enterprises in Florida dry up. The Crowe clan figures in the works of author Elmore Leonard, whom was an executive producer of the series before his death in 2013. The author excelled at creating engaging characters who lived in a universe of shades of grey.
“None of these guys think they are doing anything wrong and that is the fun part of playing it,” Buckley says. “They don’t think they are bad buys. They have conviction that what they are doing is right and that they are claiming what is theirs.”
But Justified isn’t the only tasty treat on Buckley’s professional plate. The 35-year-old is on the phone from Vancouver, where he’s filming an episode of Supernatural. Yes, the Ghostfacers are back, ready to take names and kick butt. (Not really, but they think they are, as is the wont of the bumbling team of so-so supernatural investigators led by Buckley and Travis Wester.) So, A.J., give us the scoop!
“Uhhh, we’re back?” he says, laughing again. While the details on the plot are under wraps, Buckley will say “Definitely, this episode is a lot different than any other Ghostfacers episode that we’ve done. And I will leave it at that. It’s a lot different in the way that we have shot it, and been portrayed.”
As if ping-ponging from the set in Los Angeles to Vancouver wasn’t enough, Buckley is a freshly minted father. His fiancée, Abigail Ochse, gave birth to the couple’s first child, Willow, on Jan. 19. The day they brought Willow home from the hospital, Buckley had to hop a plane to Vancouver.
He’s been keeping in touch via pictures and Skype, and as Ochse tells him, not much happens the first few weeks except sleeping and feeding.
“This is where it gets crazy: we shoot from 7 a.m. Monday to 6 in Vancouver, then I take the eight o’clock flight and get in at midnight in Los Angeles. I go home and see my fiancée and baby, then leave at 7 a.m. for an all day and night shoot for Justified,” he says. “I’m not complaining at all about how busy I am, but this is definitely going to test my sleeping ability and being able to memorize lines.”
Something else that’s been challenging that last one is his colleagues on the Justified set. From lead Timothy Olyphant to show runner Graham Yost (another Canuck) to the cast and crew, everyone is playing at the top of their game, he says.
“The words are unbelievable. The episode I’m about to do, I’m looking at the words and how it’s written and comes together is so awesome,” Buckley marvels. “Walton Goggins is the best bad guy on TV, hands down. He’s so eloquent. I am doing takes and I am looking at what he is bringing. And then it’s ‘Oh s..t. Sorry, I was looking at what you were doing there.’ Everybody just brings so much.”
Justified airs Tuesdays on Super Channel.
The above article can also be accessed online here.
TCM Overview:
At age six, actor A. J. Buckley’s family moved across the Atlantic to White Rock, British Columbia, where Buckley would grow up. Diagnosed with dyslexia, he struggled with his studies, but found success when he landed his first acting job in the mid ’90s on the Canadian adventure series “The Odyssey.” Shortly thereafter he appeared on the American science-fiction dramas “The X-Files” and “Millennium.” In 1998, he made his film debut in the teen horror thriller “Disturbing Behavior,” which boasted a lineup of teen stars including James Marsden, Katie Holmes, and Ethan Embry. He went on to appear in a number of films, most notably the teen horror flick “The In Crowd” and the acclaimed indie drama “Blue Car.” He worked regularly in television as an actor and voice actor. In 2005, he landed the recurring role on “CSI: NY” as Adam Ross, a gifted scientist with a dark sense of humor. The next year, he made his first appearance on TV’s “Supernatural” as Ed Zeddmore, an aspiring ghost hunter. The character caught on and would appear in several episodes of the show’s run. In 2008, Buckley co-founded the film production company FourFront Productions. Two years later he created a web-series spin-off for his character called “Ghostfacers.” Buckley writes, directs, and stars in the critically acclaimed web-series.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Amira Casar holds both Irish and French citizenship. She was born in London, grew up in Ireland at at sixteen moved to France with her parents. She worked as a model before studying acting. Her films include “Why Not Me” in 1999, “Transylvania” and “An Old Mistress”.
IMDB entry:
She worked as a model for Chanel and the fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier.
Born in England and subsequently raised in England, Ireland and France, Amira Casar, studied drama at the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique de Paris.
Member of the jury at the Angers First Film Festival in 2006.
Daughter of Kurdish father and a Russian opera singer.
Activities : fencing, horse-riding includes side saddle and jumping, swimming, water skiing, snow skiing, motorbike riding, martial arts, athletics.
She collaborated with the artist Sophie Calle for her Venice Biennale Installation “Prenez soin de vous”.
She played the lead role in Eleonore Faucher’s film “Gamines” in 2009. For her portrayal as Dora Maar, the surrealist artist and Picasso’s muse in “La Femme qui Pleure au Chapeau Rouge”, she won the best actress award at La Rochelle Television Film Festival.
She is fluent in both English and French, has worked in German, Italian and Spanish.
he above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Gemma Craven was born in Dublin in 1950. Her most recent success on television was in the popular Irish series “The Clinic”. Mch of her career has been based in the UK and she made her film debut with the lead in “The Slipper and the Rose” in 1975 with Richard Chamberlain and Margaret Lockwood. Her other films include “Why Not Stay for Breakfast” with George Chakiris and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. On television she has starred in the award winning “Pennies from Heaven”. She has also had a profilic stage career mainly in musicals. Gemma Craven has guest starred in the cult TV series “Fr Ted”.
Paul King was born in 1960 in Galway. His family moved to Coventry when he was a small child. He became part of the 80’s pop group “King”. He them became a famous DJ on MTV.
Maria Aitken was born in 1945 in Dublin. She is the sister of politican Jonathan Aitken. She has starred on the stage and on film and television in Britain. Her films include “Doctor Faustus” in 1967, “Half Moon Street”, “A Fish Called Wanda” in 1988 and as Lady Edwina Mountbatten in “Jinnah” in 1998. Her son is the actor Jack Davenport.
Brian McFarlane’s “Encyclopedia of British Film”:
Tall slender comedy actress, granddaughter of Lord Beverbrook, famous on stage for witty performances in such plays as “Private Lives”in 1980 and “The Women” in 1986 and on television. She has so far made only a few films but was memorably funny as John Cleese’s permanently and justifiably bad-tempered wife in “A Fish Called Wanda” in 1988. The sort of sequel “Fierce Creatures”, sadly gave her comic talents little scope.
Dominic Purcell was born in 1970 in Merseyside. His parents were from Co Louth in Ireland where they now live again. His family emigrated to Australia where be began his acting career. He has pursued his career in the U.S. His films include “Mission Impossible 2”, “Equilibrium” and “Primeval”. He starred in the highly popular TV series “Prison Break” and is currently starring in the remake of “Straw Dogs”. To view Dominic Purcell Website, please click here.
IMDB entry:
At the age of two, Dominic and his family moved from England to Sydney’s Bondi and then moved to the Western Suburbs. After becoming a landscape gardener, he soon tired of the profession and, whilst watching the war movie Platoon (1986), decided to become an actor. Due to his working-class background, acting seemed a very unlikely choice of career, so he didn’t pursue it until sometime later.
He studied at The Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and then later enrolled at the Western Australian Academy of Performing arts where he met his future wife Rebecca and studied with Hugh Jackman.
In 1997, Dominic scored a role in the TV series Raw FM (1997) and then landed a part inMission: Impossible II (2000), which was filmed in Australia. He was soon spotted by a US talent scout and went off to LA.
Since then, Dominic has been working constantly with roles in the movie Equilibrium (2002), the TV show John Doe (2002), Blade: Trinity(2004), and in the upcoming thriller Three Way (2004) and a new police television drama, Strut.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Aeryn
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Sheila Manahan was born in Dublin in 1924. Her film debut was in the Irish filmed “Another Shore”. She went on to have a career in British films. Her movies included the excellent “Seven Days to Noon” in 1950, “Footsteps in the Fog”, “The Story of Esther Costello” with Joan Crawford and “Only Two Can Play” with Peter Sellers. She was long married to the wonderful Scottish actor Fultan McCoy. Sheila Manahan died in 1988.
Ed Byrne is an award winning comedian who was born in Swords, Dublin in 1972. He has won many fans in the U.S. with his appearances on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien”.His films include “Zemanovaload” in 2005 and “Round Ireland with a Fridge” in 2010.
“Time Out” interview:
Byrne, baby, Byrne: Irish comedian Ed Byrne enjoys his second bite at the apple
The first (and last) time I interviewed Irish comedian Ed Byrne for Time Out was in August 1996. A week may be a long time in politics, but, apparently, 12 years is long enough for two careers in comedy. I take the article along to refresh his memory. ‘God, was that you who did that interview?’ he asks, looking at the old magazine. It has been over a decade so I forgive him for not remembering. ‘That photograph got me lots of favours; in fact, I ended up doing a joke about it,’ he recalls, admiring his younger self staring up from the page, tousle-haired and bare-chested. What was it? ‘Well, I slept with this girl and the next morning she’s flicking through a copy of Time Out and at the same time looking at me on the bed – sprawled, knackered, a mess, and she just goes, “Doesn’t look like the one in the catalogue!”.’He still has the same boyish face, which shows few obvious signs of his hell-raising, hard-drinking earlier life. When we spoke before, John Major was prime minister, the Spice Girls were at Number 1 with ‘Wannabe’ and Byrne was about to take his first solo show ‘A Stand-Up in the Making’ to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was a great success and kick-started a career which, by his own admission, has had some big ups and some equally large downs. ‘I had just done my television debut on Jonathan Ross’s “Big Big Talent Show”, which pretty much sold out the run for me. All the tickets had gone by the end of the first week. Saying that, the show still managed to lose 500 quid, but that’s Edinburgh for you,’ he says, smiling wryly. ‘The show stood me in good stead for ’97. Then, in ’98, I got the Perrier nomination, which was obviously very handy. In 2000, though, I only did five nights up there and that was at The Playhouse. It was too big a venue to do five nights, but I still managed to shift almost 3,000 tickets on the Saturday, which was all right. Then I did a TV show called ‘Head on Comedy’, but it got shunted all over the airways and got lost. I think it was fairly good but it never got a chance. After that I did a sitcom with Davina. Not very well received.
‘In 2001, I did a sitcom it Ireland. Not very well received. Then I started doing the Carphone Warehouse ads. I didn’t seem to do much else and started to slide off everyone’s radar.’ He’s referring to the seven years he spent as the voice behind the successful, though some might charitably say annoying, ‘Mobily’ adverts. ‘There was nothing more I could have achieved in Edinburgh, so I stopped going, and having done a one-man show every year for five years running, thought it was reasonable enough to take a break. I definitely went into a bit of a plateau or valley even from 2001-2004.’ How much of that was to do with burn-out? ‘There was definitely an element of that, but it was more to do with coming up with new material; you just can’t come up with that many jokes all the time. I think I also made some bad choices with regards to what TV shows to appear on. There was a while when I would do anything going.’
But everything turned around in 2006 when Byrne returned to Edinburgh with his highly acclaimed ‘Standing Up, Falling Down’. ‘I was really pleased with that show. Suddenly I was getting calls and being asked to do stuff again. Shows including “Mock the Week” and “Have I Got News for You”, which I’d never done before, ever. It’s almost like I’m having a second career.’ There’s obvious joy and a little relief on his face. ‘Now, I’m happier and I’m funnier than I was ten years ago. I find that very heartening. I remember thinking in 2000: I’m not going to get any funnier, I’m the funniest I’m ever going to be. Maybe that panicked me into doing anything other than fucking stand-up. I thought: Let’s get so famous you don’t have to do stand-up anymore. I think that might’ve been part of the problem.’
He looks like a man who’s learnt a lot from his travels through the Land of Funny. As a performer he’s transformed his style. In his latest show, ‘Different Class’, he’s more relaxed and comfortable on stage than ever before. ‘I’ve become more of a storyteller. Before, I always thought of myself as an observational gag merchant. I would do routines. Now, particularly with this show, it’s more a series of stories and anecdotes. I think that’s fine. It’s an acceptable notion that by 36 I might just have some good tales to tell. If I didn’t by now, I’d be a fucking boring guy.’
It’s said that hindsight has 20/20 vision, with that in mind, what advice would he give the 24-year-old Ed staring up at it him from the magazine on the table? ‘I would say don’t do everything that is offered to you. Don’t talk too much – while you might think you’re being charming, others think you’re being an arrogant twat. But I think the best advice I could give to myself, looking back, would be, don’t be quite so messy… And possibly don’t piss off Mark Lamarr. It didn’t do me any favours. Pissing off Mark Lamarr: not a good career move.’
The above “Time Out” article can also be accessed online here.
Angeline Ball was born in Dublin in 1969. She came to fame playing Imelda Quirke in the hughly successful “The Commitments” in 1991. Her other fims include “My Girl 2”, “Trojan Eddie” and “The General”.
“Independent.ie” 2014 article:
TWENTY years after Angeline Ball filmed gritty scenes in Ballymun, the Dublin actress is relishing a new role on the Shameless set’s Chatworth Estate. The Dublin actress has landed the role of Gloria Meak, the scantily clad hairdresser-in-residence in the ninth series of the award-winning show. “Gloria’s not a new resident. She’s always been there, but you’re only getting to see her now,” explains Ball, who now lives in London.
It’s a new look for the Irish actress, who was launched into the spotlight in 1991 playing Imelda Quirke in Alan Parker‘s The Commitments, after which she went on to do various television and film projects, winning a plethora of awards for her efforts.
“When Shameless hit our screens, it was gigantic. And when this part came up, I thought, ‘It’s so good, but am I the kind of actress that can do that?’
“I’d done film, played Molly Bloom, done The Commitments, a lot of soaps, Doc Martin… but it doesn’t require this kind of acting. This is very different.”
But now, she’s loving the challenge: “Gloria is sassy, feisty and insecure. She’s had various rejections in her life and that’s what makes her strong and have her own business.
“You also think she’s an ice maiden. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
Under the surface, Ball doesn’t think her new character’s a world away from the role that made her famous.
“Twenty years later, it feels to me like Gloria is very similar Imelda. I’ve spent years cutting my hair really short, playing lesbians and gritty, hard roles, and now I’ve gone back to being a fluffy girly-girl,” says the actress, who’s now in her early 40s.
And the Cabra born actress was thrown in the deep end, filming a sex scene for the first episode.
“I’ve said that I don’t want to do certain things, but we’ll see as the series goes on.”
Ball is enjoying playing the opinionated hairdresser, who is as good at gossiping as she is trimming the council estate tenants’ barnets.
“I think it’s brilliant because, to be quite honest with you, the further away from me I can get, the better,” she says.
“When you have to say those bad words, which I never say in real life, it’s easier to do,” says Ball who has two children with her partner, French graphic designer Patrice Gueroult.
The above “Independent.ie” article can be accessed online here.
Edward MacLiam was born in Mallow, Co Cork in 1976. He trained at RADA in London and graduated in 2001. His film debut was in “Conspiracy of Silence” in 2003. Has featured in such drama series as “Wakingth Dead” and “Coronation Street”. Recently starred in “Holby City” and “Paula” and “Cucumber”. His agency page here.
Sylvester McCoy was born in 1943 in Scotland. He was brought up in Ireland as his mother was Irish. He played the title character “Dr Who” from 1987 until 1989. He is currently filming “The Hobbit”.
Hazel O’Connor was born in 1955 in Coventry. Her father came from Galway. She was a major force in British music in the late 70’s and into the 1980’s. Her films include “Girls Come First” in 1975 and “Breaking Glass”. Her website can be accessed here.
Derek Thompson was born in Belfast in 1948. As a teenage he formed a singing duo with his twin sister. In 1977 he gave a brilliant performance as Harry Moon in the iconic series “Rock Follies”. In 1980 he was in the excellent “The Long Good Friday” and two years later had one of the leading roles in TV’s “Harry’s Game”. In 1986 he was one of the lead actors in “Casualty” and is still in the series to-day. He is an integral part of the show but sometimes one wishes that he diversified into other roles.
IMDB entry:
Derek Thompson was born on April 4, 1948 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an actor, known for Casualty (1986), The Long Good Friday (1980) and The Gentle Touch (1980). He is married to Dee Sadler. They have one child.
Derek Thompson met his wife, Dee Sadler, when she appeared as Maggie, a cave explorer, in an episode of Casualty (1986) in which Derek plays Charlie Fairhead. Charlie rescued Maggie when she was trapped underground after suffering a fit.
The only original cast member of Casualty (1986) to never have left the series.
He has a twin sister, Elaine. In the early sixties they formed a singing duo, Elaine and Derek, and had a few records released. They appeared together in the film, Gonks Go Beat (1965).
He has played the same character (Charlie Fairhead) on three different series: Casualty(1986), Holby City (1999) and Holby Blue (2007).
Denis Martin (1920 – October 1988) was a Northern Irish singer, actor and theatre producer active in the 1940s to 1980s.
Martin won the All-Ireland tenor competition at Feis Ceoil in 1944, He then moved to England where he performed as a singer in musical shows and in radio and TV broadcasts. Soon after arriving in England Denis joined the Players’ Theatre, a permanent music-hall company in London. In 1949 he played the juvenile lead in King’s Rhapsody with Ivor Novello. He went on the become the Director of Production at the Players’ Theatre, developing and adapting plays for musical theatre
Bryan Murray was born in Dublin in 1949. He began his acting career in the famed Abbey Theatre. He has had an extensive television career in Britain and Ireland including leading roles in “Strumpet City” in 1980, “The Irish R.M.” as Flurry Knox opposite Peter Bowles, “Brookside”, “Bread” and “Fair City”. His films include “Mrs Santa Claus” with Angela Lansbury.
Bryan Murray
Wikipedia entry:
Bryan Murray (born 13 July 1949) is an Irish actor. He plays Bob Charles in the soap opera Fair City.
Murray was born in Dublin, Ireland. As a stage actor, he began his career in Dublin at the Abbey Theatre where, as a member of The Abbey Company, he appeared in over 50 productions. In London, he has been a member of The Royal National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and has been in many productions in the West End. He has appeared many times at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, most recently in 2013 in My Cousin Rachel adapted for the stage by Joseph O’Connor. In the 2010 Dublin Fringe Festival, he appeared in the award winning production of Medea at The Samuel Beckett theatre.
Recently he presented the highly acclaimed and IFTA nominated documentary for TV3The Tenements, a four-part series charting the rise and fall of the Tenements in Dublin from the 1800s to the mid-1970s. He fronted the BBC1 children’s religious affairs programmes Knock Knock and Umbrella for three years.
On RTÉ, he had his own prime time TV talk shows Encore and Caught in the Act and presented Saturday Night Live. His nine-part radio series The Sound of Movies was aired on RTÉ Radio 1 in 2008. Most recently he has been a semi regular presenter of Late Date on RTÉ Radio 1. In the US, he presented the ‘Irish Spring’ commercial on network TV for six years, the award winning ‘Pioneer Press’ commercials for three years and hosted the St Patrick’s Day Parade for PBS Television. His latest series ‘The Big House’ will be shown on TV3 in the spring of 2013.
Bryan Murray
He co-created and co-devised the ITV series Perfect Scoundrels which ran for three years. He has co-written two musicals performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Irish Theatre Company Dublin; A Happy Go Likeable Man, after Molière, and Thieves Carnival, after Anouilth. Most recently Murray took part in the ‘One City One Book’ celebrationBread and Roses; Strumpet City Revisited reading extracts from the book with the RIAAM orchestra playing the theme music from the TV series conducted by the composer Proinnsias O’Duinn at Dublin Castle.
Although Murray’s fame increased in the eighties thanks to his role as Flurry Knox in The Irish R.M. and Shifty Boswell in the popular sitcom Bread, his role in Brookside is easily the best remembered, even though he was only in the show for eleven episodes in 1993. His character, the wife beater and child abuser Trevor Jordache, was famously stabbed and killed by his wife, Mandy (Sandra Maitland) and daughter Beth (Anna Friel). They later buried his body under the patio, where it was discovered in 1995.
He plays Bob Charles, once owner of McCoys pub but now the owner of The Hungry Pig restaurant, in the RTÉ soap opera Fair City.
Recently he took part in the ‘One City-One Book’ celebration Bread and Roses; Strumpet City Revisited in which he read extracts from the book with the RIAM orchestra playing the theme music from the TV series conducted by the composer Proinnsias O’Duinn at Dublin Castle.
The above Wikipedia entry can also be accessed online here.
Carroll O’Connor is best known for his role as Archie Bunker in the American sitcom series “All in the Family” which ran from 1971 until 1979. He was born in Manhatten in 1924. After military service during World War Two he studied acting in Dublin. Among his films was “Kelly’s Heros” with Clint Eastwood. Carroll O’Connor died in 2001.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
A few years ago, I gave a couple of lectures on the QEII, sailing from New York to Southampton. In the dining room, I was at a table with the Supremes and a quietly spoken, middle-aged American couple. I was surprised when many of the American passengers, almost ignoring the three female singers, came up to the shy, thick-set man, and greeted him as “Archie”.
It turned out that my table companion was one of the most famous actors in America. Carroll O’Connor, who has died of a heart attack aged 76, played Archie Bunker in the long-running TV series, All In The Family, from 1971 to 1979, and was then in Archie’s Bunker, from 1979 to 1983.
The show, which had an average of 50m viewers a week, was adapted from Till Death Do Us Part, and Bunker was as loud-mouthed, reactionary and misogynistic as his British equivalent, Alf Garnett. Tame as it was by today’s American TV standard, the series was a breakthrough after decades of bland sitcoms featuring wise and loveable parents, and it made O’Connor a household name.
During our voyage, I also discovered that O’ Connor, who was with Nancy, his wife since 1951, was nothing like his alter ego, being introverted, intellectual and liberal. “I never heard Archie’s kind of talk in my own family,” he said. “My father was in partnership with two Jews, and there were black families in our circle of friends.”
Despite having a lawyer father and a schoolteacher mother, O’ Connor was an extremely bad student, both at high school and college. During the second world war, he became a merchant seaman, sailing the North Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean. In 1946, he returned to his mother’s house in the New York suburb of Queens (his father had been jailed for fraud) and began working for an Irish newspaper. With a burning desire to catch up on his education, he went back to college, and later enrolled at University College, Dublin, where he took a BA in Irish history and English literature in 1952.
At the same time, he started acting professionally at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, working under the direction of Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards. He also appeared in productions at the Edinburgh festival and around Ireland. Unable to find work on his return to New York in 1954, he taught for four years, before getting a part in Burgess Meredith’s Ulysses In Nighttown, adapted from the James Joyce novel.
This led to him being offered the part of the ruthless Hollywood boss Stanley Hoff in an off-Broadway production of Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife, and it was not long before O’Connor was making a reputation as a reliable supporting actor in several overblown movies of the 1960s. He played mostly authoritarian figures, such as army officers, in Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way (1965), What Did You Do In The War, Daddy? (1966), Not With My Wife, You Don’t! (1966), The Devil’s Brigade (1968) and Kelly’s Heroes (1970) – and might have continued in the same vein had it not been for the offer by producer-writer Norman Lear to star in All In The Family.
Despite many of the character’s despicable views, O’ Connor managed to make Archie a complex, sometimes even likeable, human being. “I have a great deal of sympathy for him,” he once said in an interview. “As James Baldwin wrote, ‘The white man here is trapped by his own history, a history that he himself cannot comprehend, and therefore what can I do but love him?'”
Archie, a blue-collar worker in a dead-end job, called his long-suffering wife (Jean Stapleton) “a dingbat,” his son- in-law (Rob Reiner) “a pinko Polack,” and his daughter (Sally Struthers) “a weepin’ nellie atheist.” He thought the Democratic party was a front for communism, and that women and blacks were getting too uppity. He was also a prude.
After Archie, O’ Connor returned to the stage, but Broth ers (1983), which he directed and played in as a tough union leader dominating his four sons, closed after only one performance on Broadway. A year later, Home Front, a play about a family terrorised by their distressed Vietnam vet son, ran for 13 performances. O’ Connor only found success again in 1988 with In The Heat Of The Night, a TV series based on the 1968 film, in which he played the redneck police chief originally portrayed by Rod Steiger.
One of the supporting parts was played by O’ Connor’s adopted son, Hugh, who shot himself in March 1995 after battling against alcohol and drug addiction. This episode explained the O’ Connors’ rather melancholy air when I met them on a trip to Europe in the same year.
It also explained why Carroll had given up show business to devote himself to an anti-drugs crusade. I learned later that he had faced a writ for slander from a man he had accused of providing cocaine to Hugh – and of thus being “a partner in murder.” The case was thrown out by a California jury in 1997, and the drug supplier was jailed for a year.
O’ Connor, who made a final screen appearance last year, as Minnie Driver’s grandfather in the mawkish melodrama Return to Me, is survived by his wife and grandson.
• Carroll O’ Connor, actor, born August 2 1924; died July 21 2001.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Fionnaula Flanagan was born in Dublin in 1941. She made her film debut in 1967 in the Irish made “Ulysses”. The same year she was on Broadway in Brian Friel’s “Lovers”. She concentrated her career in the U.S. and settled in Hollywood. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s she was featured in many of the major television series such as “Bonanza”, “Mannix”, “Shaft”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, “Kojack” and “Marcus Welby M.D. She won particular acclaim for her performance in the mini-series “Ricxh Man, Rich Man Poor Man”. From the 1990’s onwards she has become a wonderful presence on film are “Some Mother’s Son”, “Waking Ned”, “The Others”, “Transamerica” and “The Guard”.
TCM Overview:
Fionnula Flanagan
Before moving to the USA from her native Ireland, the intense, attractive Fionnula Flanagan made her feature debut as Gerty McDowell in Joseph Strick’s fascinating but uneven filming of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” (1967). On Broadway, she won critical acclaim and a Tony nomination as Molly Bloom in “Ulysses in Nighttown” (1974), co-starring Zero Mostel and staged by Burgess Meredith. Flanagan has also toured in her one-person show, “James Joyce’s Women,” in which she played among others, Nora Barnacle Joyce, Sylvia Beach, Harriet Shaw Weaver, and Molly Bloom. The play was adapted as a feature film in 1984, produced by Flanagan and her husband, Garrett O’Connor.
Her career, though, has not been limited to appearing in works by her countryman, but has also encompassed stage, screen and television. In 1968, the petite, auburn-haired Flanagan moved to America and landed her first stage role in “Lovers.” She segued to the small screen where she has had the most success to date. Flanagan has appeared in numerous TV longforms, beginning with the 1973 ABC remake of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” She was the Irish maid of the famed, but acquitted suspected murderess in “The Legend of Lizzie Borden” (ABC, 1975), won an Emmy for a supporting role in the ratings winner “Rich Man, Poor Man” (ABC, 1976), and was the wife to writer William Allen White, mourning their teenaged daughter’s death “Mary White” (ABC, 1977). That same year, she created the role of Molly, a widow finding her way on the frontier in “How the West Was Won,” a role she reprised in the series spin-off. Flanagan was mother to Valerie Bertinelli in “Young Love, First Love” (CBS, 1979) and starred in George Lucas’ TV-movie, “The Ewok Adventure” (ABC, 1984). She played mother again, this time to one-armed baseball player Pete Gray (Keith Carradine) in “A Winner Never Quits” (ABC, 1986). Other notable roles include the tough-talking lieutenant in the short-lived drama series “Hard Copy” (CBS, 1987), was a smooth-talking madam in “Final Verdict” (TNT, 1991), and portrayed a widow seeking answers about her husband’s death in a rafting accident in “White Mile” (HBO, 1994).
While her feature film work has been sporadic, Flanagan did receive particular notice as a nun in the Oscar-winning short “In the Region of Ice” (1976). Her other credits have ranged from John Huston’s “Sinful Davey” (1969), as the daughter of the Duke of Argyll, to several maternal roles. Among the latter are as Molly Ringwald’s mom in “P.K. and the Kid” (lensed 1982, released in 1987), as Mary Stuart Masterson’s overbearing parent in “Mad at the Moon” (1992) and as John Cusack’s mother in “Money For Nothing” (1993). She had one of her best screen roles in another motherly part, as a gruff Irish Catholic whose son is imprisoned for terrorist activities in Northern Ireland in “Some Mother’s Son” (1996). After returning to series TV as the matriarch of an Irish-American family on the CBS drama series “To Have and To Hold” (1998), Flanaghan garnered additional praise as the morally grounded wife of a scheming villager (Ian Bannen) in the genial comedy “Waking Ned Devine” (1998). She offered perhaps one of her best turns as the slightly creepy housekeeper in “The Others” (2001). She added memorable humor to the role of Teensy Melissa Whitman in the independent feature “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (2002), a light-hearted film about a group of women who set out to mend a broken relationship between their “Ya-Ya Sister” and her daughter.
Fionnuala Flanagan
The following year, Flanagan displayed her serious side by taking on the role of Nurse Grace in Antione Fuqua’s “Tears of the Sun” (2003). An epic tale dedicated to, as director Fuqua stated, “all the men and women you protect us and go into places and do great things about which too little is said.” She then played the adoptive mother of four boys (two black, two white) seeking revenge for her murder after a grocery store robbery in “Four Brothers” (2005). Directed by John Singleton and starring Mark Wahlberg, Andre 3000, Tyrese Gibson and Garrett Hedlund as the avenging sons, “Four Brothers” was a straight-forward and often violent revenge thriller that either pleased or disappointed critics for its simplistic narrative. She then had a terrific supporting turn as the domineering, disapproving mother of a preoperative transexual (Felicity Huffman) who seeks shelter with her estranged family while traveling cross-country with the newly discovered son she fathered in her early life as a man in “Transamerica” (2005).
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Siobhan McCarthy was born in Dublin in 1957. She is known for her role in the long running television series “Bad Girls”. Other TV roles include “Lovejoy” and “Holby City”. She has had an extensive stage career in London especially in musicals.
Wikipedia entry:
Siobhán Mary Ann McCarthy (born 6 November 1957 in Dublin) is a television and stage actress. She is married to theatrical sound designer Andrew Bruce, and resides in London with her husband and two children, Kieran and Juliet. [1]
. She is perhaps best known for her role as Roisin Connor in ITV1‘s Prison drama Bad Girls.
Her television credits include Lovejoy, The Big Battalions and Holby City.
McCarthy originated the roles of the Mistress in Evita in 1978 in London’s West End, before later returning to the show to play the title role. In between, Siobhan joined the vocal harmony group Wall Street Crash (1980 – 1983) where she performed several times at London’s Talk of the Town, at the Casino in Monte Carlo, and in two Royal Variety Performances (1980 and 1982). For full details of her Wall Street Crash career, see www.wallstreet crash.co.uk. She was also the first to play Donna Sheridan in Mamma Mia! in 1999, for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
More recently she played the roles of Velma Von Tussle in the London production of Hairspray (February 2010 – March 2010) and Joanne in the Southwark Playhouse revival ofStephen Sondheim‘s Company.
The above Wikipedia entry can be also accessed online here.
Mark Lambert is an Irish actor who has starred in such films as “A Prayer for the Dying” in 1987 and “Veronica Guerin”.
His page at the Lisa Richard’s Agency:
Mark Lambert most recently appeared in the comedy-drama, An Crisis for TG4.
He is currently in rehearsal for his role as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in _Twelfth Night _at the Abbey Theatre.
From 2009-2012, he appeared as series regular Mr Hammond in_Roy_ , a TV series produced by BBC TV and Jam Media Ireland on CBBC and BBC2TV which was nominated for a children’s BAFTA in 2011. Mark also appeared as a series regular (Des Harte) in season 3 of RAW for Octagon/RTE. Other screen appearances include Malachy in Single Handed: Stolen Child directed by Anthony Byrne for Touchpaper Films/RTE/ITV and in George Gently directed by Euros Lyn for BBC TV, inBloody Sunday for Channel 4 and No Tears for RTE.
Mark has appeared in numerous productions for the Abbey and Peacock Theatres, including; Ariel, The Gigli Concert, Barbaric Comedies (for which he received an Irish Times/ESB nomination), The Patrick Pearse Motel andObserve the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. Other theatre credits include Molly Sweeney, The Three Sisters, Art, A Month in the Country, Aristocrats and The Spirit of Annie Ross, Gate Theatre, The Riot Act, Field Day, Our Country’s Good, The Recruiting Officer, and most recently Festen, Royal Court Theatre, Red Black and Ignorant and Tout, Royal Shakespeare Company, Dancing at Lughnasa, Phoenix Theatre and the Garrick, London, Juno and the Paycock, Albery Theatre for which he was nominated for an Olivier Award for his Joxer, Long Day’s Journey into Night and Comedians, Young Vic Theatre, London and The Memory of Water which won the Olivier Award for Best Production, Vaudeville Theatre, London. Television credits include The Tudors, Cracker, Frost, Bottom, The Young Ones, Dalziel and Pascoe, Sharpe’s Regiment, Fair City, Casualty and Vanity Fair. Films include The Tiger’s Tail, Veronica Guerin, _Breakfast on Pluto, A Prayer for the Dying, Durango, Jude, Kidnapped_ and Borstal Boy.
Directing includes Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Tricycle Theatre, London, The Grapes of Wrath for Storytellers and The Memory of Water, The Hunt for Red Willie at the Peacock Theatre, and Lovers at Versaillesfor the Abbey Theatre. Mark appeared as Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal, directed by Jimmy Fay at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in Don Carlos directed by Lynne Parker for Rough Magic Theatre Company at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin and in Conor McPherson’s The Weir directed by Garry Hynes at the Gate Theatre, Dublin. He appeared as Mark asJPW in Tom Murphy’s The Gigli Concert directed by Garry Hynes for Druid Theatre Company on tour across Ireland and in Sean McLoughlin’s new play Big Ol’ Piece of Cake directed by Jim Culleton for Fishamble Theatre Company.
Most recent theatre includes Brighton directed by Ben Barnes at the Theatre Royal, Waterford, Plaza Suite directed by Aoife Spillane Hinks for Rough Magic Theatre Company, Those Sick and Indigent directed by David Horan and in the transfer to the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin and national tour of Rough Magic’s Plaza Suite and The Dead as the role of Mr. Browne in the Abbey Theatre production directed by Joe Dowling.
The above Lisa Richard’s Agency website can also be accessed online here.
Dearbhla Molloy was born in 1946 in Dublin. She has acted on the London stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1991 she was part of the cast of Brian Friel’s play “Dancing at Lughnasa” which won rave reviews in Dublin, London and on Broadway. On “Coronation Street” she plasy the part of Michele Connor’s mother, Her films include “Tara Road”, “This is the Sea” and “The Blackwater Lightship” with Angela Lansbury. She has guest starred in British televison dramas like “Foyle’s War”, “New Tricks” and “Waking the Dead”.
Article in 2007 in “Independent.ie”:
It’s rare for an attractive single woman to admit to having examined her conscience to see if she had secretly been expecting some well-heeled suitor to turn up and take
care of her, but actress Dearbhla Molloy is searingly self-critical. She talks to Patricia Deevy about miracles, men, hair colour and financial meltdown.
AFTER Phaedra, Dearbhla Molloy swore she wouldn’t be back. “I’m a socialist meself and I’m quite happy to pay tax, but they used to take it off at super-rate on the piddly amount that the Gate paid you. I ended up paying for myself to do Phaedra. It took me about two years to get over it.”
She even swore off doing theatre. After she turned 50 she decided she must concentrate on earning a pension. But here she is, six months out of playing Juno in London’s Donmar Warehouse, preparing to be Bessie Burgess in The Plough and the Stars at the Gaiety, before returning to Juno for a summer run in New York.
I suppose that theatre won’t subsidise the four-week break between the Dublin and New York runs. She all but snorts: “Theatre! Do you know how much we earn a week during rehearsals? Two hundred and fifty pounds before tax, insurance and you pay your agent. So you get about £130 home. What does it pay for your groceries? That’s why I swore I wasn’t going to do any more.”
But Molloy is not a great planner. Her choice of work is guided by her heart rather than her balance sheet and a Plough directed by Stephen Rea was irresistible. (Incidentally, last time she did the Plough she played Mrs Gogan opposite one great friend, Judi Dench, and was directed by another friend, Sam Mendes. She had played in Mendes’ debut production. “And then he came to live with us. We lent him the spare room. I’ve known him since he was 23 so he’s like my son.”)
Molloy’s reasons for taking on this production are complicated something to do with wanting to plug into Irish history in the making. “In England, I do feel at one remove from what’s happening with the peace process. So Stephen’s idea about this play about trying to shake it out of the accepted, expected way of doing it and trying to make visible and present that journey between 1916 and where we are now was something that appealed to me hugely.”
She is “groping” towards a contemporary understanding of Bessie Burgess, the defiant singer of Rule Britannia and robust Protestant hymns while the 1916 Rising swells around her.
“She is terrified of the fact that the old order is disappearing. What’s she going to do? She’s going to be surrounded and run by Shinners, people that she’s hated. If I could get that into her that it’s all sorts of orders crumbling, the external order but also the internal order.
“I could be scared about it. I never saw myself as Bessie Burgess. But one of the great things that Judi Dench said to me was: `If somebody else thinks you can do it, do it.’
“I would never have thought myself I could do it, but the fact that Stephen thinks I can and the fact that Noel [Pearson, the show’s producer] thinks I can and I trust and like both.”
For a woman with a full CV, impeccable reviews and a well-deserved reputation as one of Ireland’s finest actors, these are modest sentiments. But Molloy has a modest way about her. Her interview demeanour is serious and sober because the subjects often are; to say that we talk about the meaning of life and of death is not a loose generalisation but a precise description. However, the other side also emerges: one which is fuelled by a raucous laugh and lit up by a dazzlingly mischievous smile. For all her earnestness, Molloy is no navel-gazing artiste.
Molloy’s training in acting was “just doing it”. After doing her Leaving Cert at 16, drama was the only option which appealed to her. She took courses at the Brendan Smith Academy alongside people like Anita Reeves and John Kavanagh. Later, Ray McAnally gave her voice lessons to help overcome a lisp. Later still, at 40, realising anew that acting was going to be her life for the rest of her life, she went to her friend Dench to learn to speak verse.
There was nothing in her background to send her to the stage except spirit. The eldest of seven, she grew up in Malahide and was always straining at the boundaries of propriety. She asked questions in an era when schoolgirls didn’t. Her questions were logical, like why were girls responsible for sexuality: “Boys couldn’t help it but girls could help it. And I found that profoundly offensive and I challenged that.
“All sorts of things were stirring that were being met by ancient auld bachelor priests whose answer to your question was, `That’s not a suitable question.’ My belief was that wasn’t a suitable answer, but then you were regarded as being cheeky and being difficult. I was expelled from two schools. I think it was that, that stopped me being a Catholic: not being respected and not being met at where I was at.”
She rediscovered religion, if not belief, in an ironic way. At 21 she married another actor, Bobby Carlisle. “I married as a way out, as an escape, for sure. Now I see exactly what I did, but then I didn’t. You don’t.” Carlisle was an alcoholic, and five years and one son later they separated. She went about getting a divorce in England and, although no longer Catholic, a church annulment in Ireland.
THROUGH the mid- and late Seventies, she worked between Ireland and England, and the annulment procedure trundled in the background. Though she didn’t know it then, going to England as Mibs in Hugh Leonard’s A Life in 1979 marked her final departure from Ireland. Job after job came her way, and before she knew it she’d been there three years. Rory, her son, lived with her parents and went to school in Malahide.
As part of the annulment procedure she was appointed a devil’s advocate. She doesn’t remember his name. “He was absolutely gorgeous. You’d fall in love with him. I didn’t fall in love with him because he kept challenging me, I fought like a cat with him. He wasn’t some old fogey, the kind of priest that I rebelled against. You couldn’t dismiss him. He was highly educated. He was a smart, sophisticated man.”
The cleric’s approach was as intense and demanding as analysis and she learned to embrace its challenges and what they could teach her about herself. “It’s like somebody with a mirror running around after you all the time saying: `Look in here and tell me what you see.’ And you might have been going along saying, `I have brown eyes,’ and they just say, `Look again, what do you see?’ They don’t say, `No, no, they’re blue.’ They just keep asking you what you see.
“It [the annulment] affected the whole of the rest of my life. I would have gone unconsciously onwards. It was like being forced to face in a different direction.”
Shortly after splitting with Bobby Carlisle, Molloy began a relationship with the director Brian de Salvo and she later married him. They split up 10 years ago and were divorced in 1995. Carlisle died at 40 after a heart attack.
The self-scrutiny prompted by the annulment process led Molloy to scale back her acting in her mid-30s and to train as a psychotherapist. She didn’t qualify because she never took on clients, but the process is now a part of her life. On a recent American trip she took a course in family systems. One of her tutors gave her an article on Irish-Americans.
“A lot of the things that I thought were purely personal to me, I now found are just part of my ethnic gene pool. Things like I’m not one of those people who at the end of a long-term relationship can then convert the person into a friend. I just cut them off stone-dead and never see them again. Not with any animosity: it’s just that that’s the end of that. It’s an Irish thing, seemingly.
“What else? The fact that we like to word play and we like ambiguity, and very often you’ll sense what I’m saying not because of the words that I use but because of what’s behind the words that I use. I lived with an Englishman for 20 years and we missed a lot of the time. I used to eventually say: `What do you think I’m saying? Tell me what you hear me say.’ And then he would say it and that would not be what I was saying even though I could see how he could hear it that way.”
As a twice-divorced single woman in her mid-50s, life makes demands on Dearbhla Molloy. A big one is facing financial vulnerability. “I don’t have any insurance policies and I don’t have a pension plan and any of that. I’m kind of hesitant about saying this but to the best of my ability to be responsible, I really believe that I’ll always be all right and I always have been all right.”
Two years ago, she had a financial meltdown. After doing two years’ theatre work, but living as if she was earning good money, she realised there was very little left in the bank.
“I was very frightened for about three days and then I thought: `Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”’
She examined her conscience to see if secretly she had been expecting some well-heeled suitor to turn up and take care of her, and having decided that was not the case, she was able to move on. “Just getting to that bottom level really made me look at where I was around trusting the universe. I decided I had nothing to lose and everything to gain just by saying: `OK, I believe that I’ll be fed and clothed and taken care of.’ And I have to say, it may sound ridiculous, but miracles have occurred. Things have presented themselves at exactly the right moment.
“I buy classic clothes that last for a long time and I don’t care. It’ll be cashmere but I’ll wear it until it’ll have a hole in the elbow and I don’t mind if it has a hole. I quite like that. And I’m sitting here in Armani jeans, but they’ll last me four years or whatever. In fact I have very few clothes. My wardrobe is about that wide [her open palms span a distance of hardly three feet] and I just wear them over and over again.”
The only advice she’s ever given her son is based on her hard-won wisdom: “For God’s sake get your income tax sorted out.” (After going to art college in Limerick, Rory moved to London and now they live in the same square near London Bridge. He is 31 and works in music of the modern electronic variety.)
For Molloy money is deeply significant. She grew up with a Labour-supporting father and a belief in helping the less well-off. For a long time how to share troubled her so she decided to tithe her income. One-tenth of whatever she earns goes into a special charities bank account. “Sometimes they [the charities] get a lot and sometimes they get very little, but it keeps me straight. I couldn’t cope with it: I was really getting stressed about whatever the thing is about being selfish and being responsible towards the other, and trying to be responsible towards yourself.”
This agonising also pervades her attitude to ageing. She thinks she is comfortable with her age of 54. But then she’s not sure. “I think: `Am I going to let my hair grow white? Am I going to have it dyed out of vanity or am I going to have it dyed because I prefer what I look like? Am I going to have it dyed because I want to pretend I’m not the age I am?’ So therefore I wildly overcompensate: I busily tell everyone what age I am. Maybe it’s in the hope that they’ll say: `My God, you don’t look it at all.’ So it’s a bit of a mess really.”
It sounds to me that she may have lost the religion, but she has retained that old-style self- lacerating way of thinking. She laughs wryly: “That’s right. I must be searingly honest. Scorch-your-soul honest. Why not think: `I look better with dyed hair so I’m dying my hair?”’
In the 10 years since she split with Brian de Salvo, Molloy hasn’t had a significant romantic relationship. “I don’t know whether that’s me or whether it’s just not there. I don’t know whether it’s a function of the age I am, ’cause most men of 50 want 35-year-olds. I’ve got past the stage of thinking it’s because I’m invisible or not attractive, because I attract young men, but they’re not suitable permanent candidates or the ones that I attract are not.”
She sees now that in the past she was the archetypal victim in her relationships with men, that she allowed and expected them to dominate her. But what is common in the good marriages she sees in her circle is that people live with their best friends. “Whereas I have to say I never had a relationship with my best friend, it was always based on something else.”
BUT she is a “fundamentally contented person”, so meeting a man is not a priority. If anything, psychological integration is what she holds sacred. “I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that meaning is to me the most important thing. Meaning, I suppose, converts pain into suffering which elevates it to a kind of graceful state. It’s a kind of pay-off. Meaning is a central, central theme of my life. Maybe I’ve just made a construct which makes me feel safe. I don’t know. But I don’t really care.”
The above “Independent.ie” article can also be sourced online here.
Richard Harris obituary in “The Guardian” in 2002.
The career of Richard Harris has been mile-stoned by a series of noisy headlines – nightclub squabbles, on-set brawls with actors he does not like. It would be tempting to assume that he takes seriously his usual on-screen role as rebel. Oddly, the industry has tolerated his peccadilloes without being compensated with either great reviews or a stampede to the box-office. That Harris was larger-than-life, ‘a character’ was evident, but it was not so immediately obvious on film . In a way he crept up on is in stealth, like the great stars of the 30s, getting better and better, more authoritative, more interesting, more varied”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International years”. (1972).
Richard Harris was born in Limerick in 1930. He studied acting at the London Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his film debut in 1958 in “Alive and Kicking” with Kathleen Harrison. He made an impression against stiff acting competition from James Cagney, Don Murray, Glynis Johns and Dana Wynter in “Shake Hands with the Devil” in 1959. He was third billed after Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard in “Munity on the Bounty” and then went on to star in the British sink dra ma “This Sporing Life” as a North of England rugby player. Next he went to Mexico to star with Charlton Heston and Senta Berger in “Major Dundee”. His Hollywood films include “Caprice” with Doris Day and “Camelot”. In 1990 he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as the Bull McCabe in “The Field”. He was also associated with the Harry Potter movies as Dumbledore. One of his last roles was in “Gladiator”. Richard Harris died in 2002 aged 72.
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Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
2537507 UNFORGIVEN, US poster art, Richard Harris, Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, 1992; (add.info.: Directed by Clint Eastwood); Everett Collection.
There was a time when writers could hardly mention the name of the actor Richard Harris, who has died aged 72, without using the dread epithet “hellraiser”. He was lumbered with this reputation for even longer than his drinking buddies and fellow Celts, Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole – with whom had much in common. They all started off on both stage and screen with great promise, but much of their talent was dissipated by appearances in vehicles unworthy of them, with some intermittent flashes of genius.
Not that the rumbustious, well-built and fair-haired Harris tried to discourage the public persona of a hard-drinking, hard-living Irishman, hitting the headlines with nightclub brawls and noisy on-set disputes. “There are too many primadonnas in this business and not enough action,” he once remarked.
Harris’s careers fell into three phases: the hot-headed, working-class young rebel (This Sporting Life, 1963); the macho masochist (A Man Called Horse, 1970) or fiery action hero (The Wild Geese, 1978); and, finally, the grey-bearded sage.
After the less than glorious middle period of the 1970s and 1980s, during which time he had become self-parodic, he won renewed respect for his Oscar-nominated performance as “Bull” McCabe, an irascible farmer fighting to save his land in The Field (1990), and for imposing appearances as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator (2000) and as Albus Dumbledore (also Oscar-nominated) in Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), a role he repeated in the new Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets (2002).
The youngest of nine children born to a Limerick flour-mill owner, Harris studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art – Rada turned him down – before joining Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company, with whom he made his first professional appearance, in Brendan Behan’s The Quare Fellow at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East.
At 26, he made a considerable West End impact in The Ginger Man, adapted by JP Donleavy from his novel, turning the incorrigible louse Sebastian Dangerfield, living in a bedsitter and up to his neck in debt, into a loveable scoundrel.
His film career began at around the same time, initially as the local Lothario in Alive And Kicking (1958), an Irish comedy, although his true strength was not yet fully called upon, even though he played a villain trying to harpoon Gary Cooper in The Wreck Of The Mary Deare (1961), a doughty corporal in The Long And The Short And The Tall (1961) and a leading mutineer in Mutiny On The Bounty (1962).
Then Lindsay Anderson, making his first feature, perceptively cast him in This Sporting Life. Harris, whose ambition to become a rugby league professional had been ended by a bout of tuberculosis, was given free rein to display his animalism as Frank Machin, an aggressive and inarticulate rugby player who develops an amour fou for his dowdy and bitter landlady – a relationship as violent as the game he plays.
When she dies, Harris, who provided an emotional power rarely attained in British films, sinks to his knees in mental pain. Pain pervades the film, on the rugby field and in the dentist’s chair, where Machin is having his broken teeth ruggedly extracted. Seven years later, Harris endured worse agony in A Man Called Horse.
The 1960s saw him becoming an international star. At a time when it was fashionable to cast British actors in Italian films, Michelangelo Antonioni got him to play Monica Vitti’s lover in The Red Desert (1964). Harris, dubbed and adrift in one of his rare introspective roles, hated making the film.
More to his liking was Captain Tyreen, a flamboyant and ambivalent confederate prisoner in Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1964), clashing – on and off screen – with Charlton Heston. Heston recalled that Harris was “very much the professional Irishman, and an occasional pain in the posterior”; Harris thought his co-star “so square”.
9There followed a mixed bag of parts: a fervent Norwegian resistance fighter in The Heroes Of Telemark (1965); Julie Andrews’s former lover in Hawaii (1966); Cain, in The Bible (1966); and, woefully miscast and seeming to be wearing blue eye shadow as an industrial spy, in Caprice (1967), opposite Doris Day.
But, in the same year, Harris took one of the most significant roles in his career, which was eventually to make him a multi-millionaire. Although the Lerner-Loewe musical Camelot (1967), in which he portrayed King Arthur with touching sincerity and an acceptable singing voice, was an expensive flop, he would later play the role – created by Richard Burton – many times on stage, both on Broadway and in London in the 1980s, and buy its rights. He also released a hit single – Jim Webb’s MacArthur Park (1968).
Divorced from his first wife, Elizabeth Rees-Williams, after a 12-year marriage that produced three sons, in 1970 Harris provided a warts-and-all impersonation in the title role of Cromwell, and was A Man Called Horse. The latter was a blond, 19th-century English aristocrat, who, captured by the Sioux, rises from being a beast of burden to espousing their cause. The somewhat pretentious film, and its sequel The Return Of A Man Called Horse (1976), contained a sadistic sun-vow ritual with the hero suspended by clamps from his pectoral muscles.
For the rest of the decade, Harris was as visible as he was risible. “I consider a great part of my career a total failure,” he said. “I went after the wrong things – got caught in the 60s. I picked pictures that were way below my talent. Just to have fun.”
Among these pictures were Echoes Of A Summer (1976) as the father of 12-year-old Jodie Foster, dying of a terminal disease; The Cassandra Crossing (1977), a disaster movie in which he tried to counteract a plague on a train; and Orca (1977), where he was a shark hunter incurring the wrath of a killer whale and Charlotte Rampling, to whom he says, “I resent it when a pretty and intelligent woman tells me I’m dumber than a fish.”
There were also two films shot in South Africa at the height of the apartheid era: The Wild Geese (1979), about mercenaries, and A Game For Vultures (1980) ostensibly about political strife in Rhodesia. Then, in the ludicrous Tarzan The Ape Man (1981), Harris struggled to maintain some dignity as the father of Bo Derek’s scantily-clad Jane.
For a while in the 1980s, after divorcing his second wife, Ann Turkel, Harris went into semi-retirement on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas, where he kicked his drinking habit and embraced a healthier lifestyle. It had a beneficial effect. Powerful in the West End run of Piradello’s Henry IV, he made an indelible impression as the dandified killer English Bob in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992).
Because his granddaughter said she would never speak to him again if he turned down the role of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, Harris committed himself to all seven of the films based on JK Rowling’s books. “I’ll keep doing it as long as I enjoy it, my health holds out and they still want me, but the chances of all three of those factors remaining constant are pretty slim,” he remarked.
Despite enjoying his renaissance as one of cinema’s grand old men, Harris, who is survived by his sons Jared, Jamie and Damian, also reflected: “I’m not interested in reputation or immortality, or things like that. I don’t care if I’m remembered. I don’t care if I’m not remembered. I don’t care why I’m remembered. I genuinely don’t care.”
· Richard Harris, actor, born October 1 1930; died October 25 2002The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Harris, Richard St John (1930–2002), stage and screen actor, was born 1 October 1930 in Limerick city, fifth child among six sons and two daughters of Ivan Harris, a prosperous flour‐mill owner, and Mildred Harris (née Harty). Reared in a comfortable, middle‐class home at Overdale, Ennis Road, Limerick, he attended the Jesuits’ Crescent College. Rebellious and lacking in academic ambition, he was frequently in trouble at school, which he left without sitting the leaving certificate, thereafter working desultorily in the family business. Highly accomplished in sport, especially rugby, he played on the first Crescent side to win the Munster schools’ cup (1947), and on the Garryowen side that won the 1952 Munster senior cup. Competing in inter‐provincial junior cup matches, he had ambitions to play senior rugby at international level. These hopes were dashed when he contracted tuberculosis, which enforced a lengthy two‐year convalescence (1953–5), largely confined to bed in the family home, passing the time by reading avidly and widely. Devouring Shakespeare and the range of modern fiction and drama, he conceived a desire to pursue a career in the theatre (having previously flirted with amateur dramatics). Moving to London in 1955 on a small legacy in Guinness shares from an aunt, he initially intended to study directing, but failed to find a suitable course. Rejected by the Central School as too old, he studied acting at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), one of the few London drama schools then including study of Stanislavksy, whose works had informed his self‐education.
His gifts of improvisation impressed Joan Littlewood, who cast him, in his London stage debut, in the first production (1956) of ‘The quare fellow’, the prison‐yard drama by Brendan Behan (qv); as the young prisoner Mickser, Harris intoned the play’s curtain‐raising song, ‘The auld triangle’. Throughout the later 1950s he pursued an exciting stage apprenticeship as a regular member of Littlewood’s path‐breaking Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, and in productions of other companies. He attracted wide notice as the anarchic scoundrel Sebastian Dangerfield in ‘The ginger man’ (1959), J. P. Donleavy’s stage adaptation of his own novel. Initially intended for the main supporting role, Harris insisted that he was born to play the lead: ‘It’s me. It’s my life.’ He made his professional Irish stage debut when the play was brought to Dublin’s Olympia theatre (October 1959) by Godfrey Quigley (qv), and delighted in the ensuing controversy: the run was cancelled after three days when author and cast refused to make cuts demanded by a management intimidated by morally outraged press reviews.
Harris’s film debut came in a minor role in the comedy Alive and kicking (1958). In his early supporting film roles he was usually typecast as the impulsive young rebel, oozing machismo, and chafing under the restraints imposed by effete, cautious superiors. He appeared in two films shot at Ardmore studios, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Shake hands with the devil (1959) and A terrible beauty (1960), and made his Hollywood debut opposite Gary Cooper in The wreck of the Mary Deare (1959). He was included in the stellar cast of the international blockbuster The guns of Navarone (1961), and played the disgruntled, impetuous seaman John Mills in the lavish remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), on the set of which in Tahiti he famously locked horns with Marlon Brando, once his adolescent idol.
Harris’s breakthrough came in This sporting life (1963), the feature‐film directing debut of Lindsay Anderson, and one of the landmarks of early 1960s British social realist cinema. As the period’s quintessential ‘angry young man’, Harris played an inarticulate, brutishly violent, but emotionally vulnerable Yorkshire coalminer turned professional rugby league player, who becomes involved with his flinty widowed landlady, played by Rachel Roberts. In an uncompromisingly authentic portrayal, Harris captured his character’s fundamental masochism, both physical and emotional, disguised as hardnosed, manly stoicism. The performance won him the best actor award at the 1963 Cannes film festival, and an Academy award nomination. He obtained starring roles under two of the decade’s most important film directors, Michelangelo Antonioni on The red desert (1964), and Sam Peckinpah on Major Dundee (1965).
In the mid 1960s Harris’s international film career took off; a hot property, commanding hefty fees, he took a pot‐pourri of roles in largely mediocre pictures, claiming a wish to be as versatile an actor as possible. After lobbying obsessively, he landed the plum role of King Arthur in the movie version of the hit stage musical Camelot (1967). The performance having revealed an acceptable singing voice, he embarked on a parallel career as a pop singer. His recording of Jimmy Webb’s enigmatic, seven‐minute single ‘MacArthur Park’ was a transatlantic chart hit in summer 1968, which he followed with two LPs, A tramp shining (1968), an album of Webb compositions, and The yard went on forever (1968). Over the next five years he recorded several more LPs, released eight singles, and performed a concert tour with the Phil Coulter orchestra (1972). He ended the 1960s with two arresting screen performances. He was a reluctant police informer opposite Sean Connery’s miners’ leader in The Molly Maguires (1969). In A man called Horse (1970) – an unconventional western that proved a surprising box‐office success, and attained cult status – he played a footloose English aristocrat on an American hunting expedition in 1825 who is captured by Lakota Sioux; the performance was famous for the gruesome, but inaccurate, depiction of the Lakota sun‐dance ritual. He subsequently appeared in two execrable sequels, Return of a man called Horse(1976) and Triumphs of a man called Horse (1982). He took his only turn in the director’s chair on Bloomfield (1971), in which he also starred, as a soccer player in decline. The previous year (1970) he had played Oliver Cromwell (qv) in Ken Hughes’s Cromwell.
Throughout these years Harris was notorious for a hectic, drink‐fuelled, hell‐raising lifestyle, sensationally reported (and often exaggerated) in tabloid journalism. Volatile and pugnacious, he made frequent headlines with drunken brawls, scrapes with the law, marital storms, and a penchant for flamboyantly eccentric, hippie‐style attire. In the early 1970s he resided in London in Tower House, a sprawling Victorian neo‐gothic mansion, before moving in the mid 1970s to a property on Paradise Isle in the Bahamas, which he retained till his death. Warned by doctors that he had eighteen months to live if he continued drinking, after bidding farewell to alcohol in August 1981 with two bottles of Chateau Margaux 1947 (at $325 each), he remained dry for over a decade, before returning to the occasional dietary Guinness.
During the 1970s he appeared in a multitude of average to poor films, marketing his celebrity for massive pay cheques, ‘as visible as he was risible’ (Guardian obit.). In the 1980s he all but ceased film acting. He returned to the stage in a revival of ‘Camelot’, which toured America to sell‐out houses (1981–2), and played less successfully in London (1982–3). The stage show was filmed and screened by HBO in the USA (1982). Having purchased the rights to the stage production, he augmented his already considerable personal wealth into the multimillions by taking the show on an extremely lucrative world tour. For a mesmerising performance on the London West End and a British tour in ‘Henry IV’ by Luigi Pirandello, Harris won the London Evening Standard theatre award for best actor (1990–91). The role coincided with the artistic resurrection of his film career, as the ‘Bull’ McCabe in The field (1990), adapted from the play by John B. Keane (qv), and directed by Jim Sheridan. In a saga of land hunger and vengeance in Co. Kerry, Harris played an obstinate, turbulent, tragic character with a commanding performance, for which he won a second Oscar nomination. Referring to the Shakespearean roles that he had once aspired to play, he remarked that if This sporting life was the Hamlet of his career, the ‘Bull’ McCabe would be his Lear. The role inaugurated the finest sustained period of his career in cinema, as he chose exacting roles in worthy productions, performed with appropriate blends of passion and restraint, inflected with the gravitas of age. His credits included a weathered gunslinger in Clint Eastwood’s iconoclastic western Unforgiven (1992), an Irish traveller patriarch in Trojan Eddie(1996), and a magisterial Marcus Aurelius in Ridley Scott’s Oscar‐winning Gladiator (2000). He exuded beguiling charm as the wise and benign wizard Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s stone (2001), reaching the largest audience of his career in the second biggest hit in cinematic history (after Titanic); after thrice turning down the role, he relented when his eleven‐year‐old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again. He reprised the role in Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets(2002), released three weeks after his death. His last leading role was in My kingdom (2002), directed by Don Boyd, as a Lear‐like gangster chieftain in contemporary Liverpool, for which he was nominated for best actor at the British Independent Film Awards.
Through a remarkably uneven career, Harris made over seventy‐five movies. Tall, burly, and broad‐shouldered, he filled the screen as a massive, brooding physical presence, noted for a throaty vocal delivery (‘a man called hoarse’, some quipped). Ireland’s first global cinema star, he was as famous for his legendary off‐screen escapades as for his performances. Revelling in his own image, he could be defiant, outspoken, and cantankerous, but also immensely entertaining as a self‐deprecating raconteur, exuding a boyish sense of fun. He dismissed criticism of career decisions more commercial than artistic with unconvincing deprecation of the actor’s craft, and replied to critics who charged that he had for too long squandered his talent by asserting ‘I didn’t fulfil their idea of my talent’ (quoted in Independent obit.). Remaining a passionate supporter of Irish and Munster rugby, he was a familiar face in the stands at Lansdowne Road and Thomond Park, and remarked that he would gladly swap all his acting accolades ‘for one sip of champagne from the Heineken Cup’ (quoted on IMDB).
Harris married first (1957) Elizabeth Rees‐Williams, a 20‐year‐old London acting student, only daughter of Lord Ogmore, a liberal peer; they had three sons. They divorced in 1969, some years after separating, but remained on friendly terms. He married secondly (1974) Ann Turkel, an American fashion model and aspiring actress, who later pursued a career as a photographer; they had no children, and divorced in 1981. During his last decade he lived in a luxurious suite in the Savoy hotel, London. After falling ill with Hodgkin’s disease, and receiving chemotherapy, he was hospitalised with a chest infection in August 2002. He died 25 October 2002 in the University College Hospital, London. After a private family funeral, his ashes were scattered at his home in the Bahamas.
Sources
Michael Feeney Callan, Richard Harris: a sporting life (1990); Gus Smith, Richard Harris: actor by accident (1990); Tom and Sara Pendergast (ed.), International dictionary of films and filmmakers, iii: Actors and actresses (2000 ed.), 533–6; Guardian, 26 Oct. 2002; Ir. Times, 26, 28 Oct., 2 Dec. 2002; Sunday Times (Ir. ed.), 27 Oct. 2002; Daily Telegraph, 28 Oct. 2002; Independent (London), 28 Oct. 2002; Times, 28 Oct. 2002; Michael Feeney Callan, Richard Harris: sex, death, and the movies: an intimate biography (2003); Cliff Goodwin, Behaving badly: the life of Richard Harris (2003); Internet Movie Database, www.imdb.com (accessed 7 June 2006); ODNB online
Jared Harris was born in London in 1961. He is the son of the actor Richard Harris. His film debut was in 1989 in “The Rachel Papers”. His other films include “Natural Born Killers”, in 1994, “White Lies” and “Lost in Space”.
IMDB entry;
Jared Harris was born Jared Francis Harris in London, England. He is the son of famous Irish actor Richard Harris and Welsh actress Elizabeth Harris (Elizabeth Rees), and brother of Damian Harris and Jamie Harris.
Despite being the son of esteemed Irish actor Richard Harris, Jared showed little interest in following his father’s career, until he was cast in a college production while attending North Carolina’s Duke University (USA), where he studied drama and literature, in the early 1980s.
After graduation, Jared returned to the UK where he attended Central School of Speech and Drama, along such future stars as ‘Jason Isaccs’ and ‘James Nesbitt.’ After graduation, Jared joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing in ‘Mark Rylance”s Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, the Silent Woman and A Clockwork Orange. In 1989, he had his screen debut in The Rachel Papers (1989).
In 1990, while on vacation in New York, Jared auditioned for the role of Hotspur in Henry IV part 1., which he played at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
Still in New York, Jared appeared in the off-Broadway play Ecstasy, for which he won an Obie Award in 1992.
Joyce Chancellor was born in 1906 in Dublin. Her entire career was in British films and the early days of television. Her film debut was in 1934 in “Irish Hearts”.
Tribute from “Irish Times” by Jessica Traynor in 2019.
Barry Fitzgerald was a man with a talent for creating conundrums for the good people at the Academy. Not only did he cause an upset by being nominated in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories for the role of Fr Fitzgibbon in Going My Way in 1944 (he won in the latter category), he also managed to decapitate his Oscar statuette with a golf club not long afterwards.
Fitzgerald’s win was the last time the same person would be nominated for two Oscars for these two categories – the Academy would change the rules the following year. After wartime metal shortages ceased and Oscar statuettes reverted from their temporary gold-sprayed plaster construction to their usual gold-plated bronze, it wouldn’t be so easy to decapitate them while practicing your swing. The reasons for the accident are probably best summed up by Fitzgerald’s own attitude to golf: “A golf course is nothing but a pool room moved outdoors”.
Fitzgerald was born William Joseph Shields in 1888 in Portobello. His family were Church of Ireland, and his father Adolphus was a compositor, a trade union organiser, and was instrumental in setting up the first Fabian Societybranch in Ireland. His wife Fanny (née Ungerland) was originally from Hamburg, and came to Ireland in search of a less restrictive society. The couple had seven children and education and culture were valued in the household. Shields attended Skerry’s College and joined the civil service in 1911.
Shields’s brother Arthur, younger than him by eight years, began taking acting classes in the Abbey in 1913, graduating to larger roles by 1914 when the Abbey’s first company were touring abroad. Bored with his civil service job but not yet ready to let go of the steady income – “It was an easy job, full of leisure” – Fitzgerald decided to try his hand at acting too. Small of stature and with excellent comic timing in contrast to Arthur’s taller physique, the brothers had different styles and were rarely in direct competition. Nevertheless, William decided to change his name to Barry Fitzgerald, which as in part to shield his moonlighting as an actor from his bosses at the Department of Industry and Commerce. He would maintain his day job alongside acting roles until 1929.
The highlight of Fitzgerald’s early acting career was his definitive Captain Jack Boyle, played opposite Sara Allgood’s Juno and FJ McCormick’s Joxer Daly in the 1924 debut of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock. Interestingly, Arthur Shields played his son, Johnny Boyle, a suspension of disbelief that must have owed much to Fitzgerald’s skilled physical performance as the ageing, blowhard “captain”. Fitzgerald was a friend of O’Casey’s, and took up the role of Fluther Good in the premiere of The Plough and the Stars in 1926. It was a great success, but not without controversy. An Irish Times report of February 15th, 1926 records an incident where several young men (termed “gunboys” by the paper) turned up at Fitzgerald’s mother’s house, hoping to prevent him from performing: “They assured the old lady that no harm would come to her son, but they had their orders to keep him in a safe place until it was too late for him to appear on the Abbey stage”. Fitzgerald wasn’t living there at the time, and his mother and sisters refused to reveal his whereabouts. The play went ahead. But perhaps this incident is another clue as to the potential need for pseudonyms in the politically charged post-civil war atmosphere.
Fitzgerald’s friendship with O’Casey led him to England to take the role written for him in The Silver Tassie, rejected by the Abbey in 1929. He then starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of Juno and the Paycock, shot in London in 1930. The 1930s took Fitzgerald to the United States on Abbey Theatre tours in 1932 and 1934, performing in O’Casey plays alongside Synge staples like Playboy of the Western World and The Shadow of the Glen, Abbey Director and playwright Lennox Robinson’s The Far-off Hills.
In 1936, he and Arthur starred in John Ford’s version of The Plough and the Stars. This launched Fitzgerald’s Hollywood career and roles followed in films such as Bringing Up Baby (1938), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and And Then There Were None (1945), alongside his Oscar-winning turn in 1944’s Going My Way. A long-term creative partnership between Fitzgerald and Ford often found Fitzgerald cast as the comic foil to larger-than-life stars such as John Wayne. He would play alongside Arthur in Hollywood too, in Ford’s beloved The Quiet Man. As a character actor, he was unsurpassed in his era, and while Arthur’s career waned in later life, Fitzgerald would continue to be sought after.
Fitzgerald was rather reticent in his personal life, and Arthur Shields described his brother as “a very shy little man […] uncomfortable in crowds, and really dreaded meeting new people, but he was not a recluse and did enjoy certain company, especially when the ‘old chat’ was good”. Fitzgerald was a bachelor all his life, sharing an apartment in Hollywood with his stand-in Angus D Taillon. Tailon died in 1953 and Fitzgerald returned to Dublin in 1959, where he died in 1961. On is death, his friend Sean O’Casey said: “I loved the man. That is the only appreciation I can give. He was one of the greatest comedians who ever went on stage”.
Stephen Boyd is one of the most underappreciated of actors and his career is in definit need o f reappraisal. He was born in Northern Ireland in 1931
. He came to promincnce as an Irish spy in the 1956 thriller “The Man Who Never Was” with Clifton Webb and Gloria Grahame. He starred opposite some of the great leading ladies of the period e.g. Diana Dors in “An Alligator Named Daisy”, “Brigitte Bardot in “”The Night Heaven Fell”, Joan Collins in “Island in the Sun”, Susan Hayward in “Woman Obsessed”, Doris Day in “Jumb”, Dolores Hart in “The Inspector”, Sophia Loren in “The Fall of the Roman Empire” , Gina Lollobigida in “Imperial Venus” and Raquel Welch in “Fantastic Voyage”.
His best remembered role was as Messala friend of “Ben-Hur” in 1959. It was a deeply shaded , nuanced performance for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
His last film was “The Squeeze” in 1977 where he played a hard-man gangster. He gave again a terrific performance although he looked much thinner that usual. He died of a heart attack in 1977 in California.
To view an interesting article on Stephen Boyd, please click here.
IMDB entry:
Stephen Boyd was born William Millar on July 4, 1931, at Glengormley, Northern Ireland, one of nine children of Martha Boyd and Canadian truck driver James Alexander Millar, who worked for Fleming’s on Tomb Street in Belfast. He attended Glengormley & Ballyrobert primary school and then moved on to Ballyclare High School and studied bookkeeping at Hughes Commercial Academy.
In Ireland he worked in an insurance office and travel agency during the day and rehearsed with a semi-professional acting company at night during the week and weekends. He would eventually manage to be on the list for professional acting companies to call him when they had a role. He joined the Ulster Theatre Group and was a leading man with that company for three years, playing all kinds of roles.
He did quite a bit of radio work in between as well, but then decided it was distracting him from acting and completely surrendered to his passion. Eventually he went to London as an understudy in an Irish play that was being given there, “The Passing Day”.
In England he became very ill and was in and out of work, supplementing his acting assignments with odd jobs such as waiting in a cafeteria, doorman at the Odeon Theatre and even busking on the streets of London. Even as things turned for the worst, he would always write back to his mother that all was well and things were moving along so as not to alarm her in any way or make her worry.
Sir Michael Redgrave discovered him one night at the Odeon Theatre and arranged an introduction to the Windsor Repertory Company. The Arts Council of Great Britain was looking for a leading man and part-time director for the only major repertory company that was left in England,
The Arts Council Midland Theatre Company, and he got the job. During his stay in England he went into television with the BBC, and for 18 months he was in every big play on TV. One of the major roles in his early career was the one in the play “Barnett’s Folly”, which he himself ranked as one of his favorites.
In 1956 he signed a seven-year contract with 20th Century-Fox. This led to his first film role, as an IRA member spying for the Nazis in The Man Who Never Was (1956), a job he was offered by legendary producer Alexander Korda. William Wyler was so struck by Boyd’s performance in that film that he asked Fox to loan him Boyd, resulting in his being cast in what is probably his most famous role, that of Messala in the classic Ben-Hur (1959) opposite Charlton Heston.
He received a Golden Globe award for his work on that film but was surprisingly bypassed on Oscar night. Still under contract with Fox, Boyd waited around to play the role of Marc Anthony in Cleopatra (1963) oppositeElizabeth Taylor.
However, Taylor became so seriously ill that the production was delayed for months, which caused Boyd and other actors to withdraw from the film and move on to other projects.
Boyd made several films under contract before going independent. One of the highlights was Fantastic Voyage (1966), a science-fiction film about a crew of scientists miniaturized and injected into the human body as if in inner space. He also received a nomination for his role of Insp. Jongman in Lisa (1962) (aka “The Inspector”) co-starring with Dolores Hart.
Boyd’s Hollywood career began to fade by the late 1960s as he started to spend more time in Europe, where he seemed to find better roles more suited to his interests.
When he went independent it was obvious that he took on roles that spoke to him rather than just taking on assignments for the money, and several of the projects he undertook were, at the time, quite controversial, such as Slaves (1969) and Carter’s Army (1970).
Boyd chose his roles based solely on character development and the value of the story that was told to the public, and never based on monetary compensation or peer pressure.
Although at the height of his career he was considered one of Hollywood’s leading men, he never forgot where he came from, and always reminded everyone that he was, first and foremost, an Irishman.
When the money started coming in, one of the first things he did was to ensure that his family was taken care of. He was particularly close to his mother Martha and his brother Alex.
Boyd was married twice, the first time in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella di Sarzana, but that only lasted (officially) during the filming of “Ben Hur”.
His second marriage was to Elizabeth Mills, secretary at the British Arts Council and a friend since 1955. Liz Mills followed Boyd to the US in the late 1950s and was his personal assistant and secretary for years before they married, about ten months before his death on June 2, 1977, in Northridge, California, from a massive heart attack while playing golf – one of his favorite pastimes
Park in Chatsworth, California. It was a terrible loss, just as he seemed to be making a comeback with his recent roles in the series Hawaii Five-O (1968) and the English movieThe Squeeze (1977).
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The Big Gamble, poster, US poster art, from left: Stephen Boyd, Juliette Greco, David Wayne, 1961. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
It is a real tragedy to see that a man who was so passionate about his work, who wanted nothing but to tell a story with character, a man who was ahead of his time in many ways ended up being overlooked by many of his peers.
One fact remains about Stephen Boyd, however–his fans are still passionate about his work to this day, almost 30 years after his death, and one has to wonder if he ever realized that perhaps in some way he achieved the goal he set out for himself: to entertain the public and draw attention to the true art of acting while maintaining glamor as he defined it by remaining himself a mystery.– IMDb Mini Biography By: Brigitte Ivory
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Boyd, Stephen (1928–77), actor, was born William Millar 4 July 1928 at Glengormley near Belfast. He took his mother’s maiden name for the stage, and became a US citizen under that name in 1963. He began acting with the Carnmoney Amateur Dramatic Society, making his professional stage debut at the age of 16 before graduating to the Ulster Theatre Group. His voice became familiar as the RUC man in BBC Northern Ireland’s long-running radio series ‘The McCooeys’. After a short spell in Canada he worked in England, making an uncertain living in repertory theatre and securing an occasional television part. While working as a doorman at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square, he secured an introduction to the director Alexander Korda, who gave him a contract with his London Film Company. He made his largely unnoticed screen debut in the comedy An alligator named Daisy (1955), followed by Hell in Korea (1956). After Korda’s death he moved to Twentieth Century Fox and secured a major part in the western The bravadoes (1958). Dark and strikingly handsome, he was noticed by William Wyler, who cast him as Messala in Ben-Hur (1959). His portrayal of Messala, Ben-Hur’s Roman boyhood friend turned mortal enemy, won him a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and made him an international star. In the famous chariot race Boyd and Charlton Heston did almost all their own driving. During the 1960s he appeared in several historical epics, mostly of dubious quality, and none of these performances came close to matching his impressively sinister Messala. Other than Messala, perhaps his best performance was as the actor whose rapid rise is followed by an equally rapid decline in The Oscar (1966). Frustrated at being offered poor roles and at his lack of artistic control, he founded his own film production company in 1973. Altogether he appeared in forty-two films, mostly playing villains, despite his good looks. Among the more notable were The big gamble (1960), filmed partly on location in Dublin; Shalako (1968), a western in which he co-starred with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot; and his last film, a British thriller, The squeeze (1977), in which he played a Belfast gangster. The Irish Times described him as ‘the nearest thing to a Hollywood star this island has produced since Barry Fitzgerald(qv)’. He died 2 June 1977 from a heart attack while playing golf with his wife Elizabeth at Northridge, California
Geraldine Hughes was born in 1970 in Belfast. She made her acting debut with “Children at the Crossroads” in 1984. Her films include “Murder She Wrote:Celtic Riddle” with Angela Lansbury, “Rocky Balboa” with Sylvester Stallone in 2006 and “Gran Torino” with Clint Eastwood.
IMDB entry:
Geraldine Hughes (born 1970) is a Northern Irish film, television and stage, actress. She was born in West Belfast and lived in the Divis flats for a time. She won a private scholarship and attended university in America. She is best known for her portrayal of “Little Marie” in 2006’s Rocky Balboa. Hughes also wrote and performed a one-woman show entitled Belfast Blues in New York City and appeared on television on ER and Profiler, among others. Recently, she played Clint Eastwood’s daughter-in-law in Gran Torino.
Colin ODonoghue was born in Drogheda, Co. Louth in 1980. Colin ODonoghue starred for several seasons in RTE’s popular drama series “The Clinic” and also featured in the mini-series “The Tudors”.
In 2010 he completed a major role in “The Rite” with Anthony Hopkins. Colin ODonoghue is now starring in the hit U.S. tv series “Once Upon A Time”.
IMDB entry:
O’Donoghue was born and raised in Drogheda, County Louth, in a Roman Catholic family. He initially attended Dundalk Grammar School, and then The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. At age 16, O’Donoghue went to Paris, France, for a month to learn the French language. Colin’s early career was mainly split between theatre and television work in Ireland and the UK. In 2003, Colin won the Irish Film and Television Award for “Best New Talent” for his role as Norman in “Home For Christmas.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: christina
Colin ODonoghue was born in Drogheda, Co. Louth in 1980. Colin ODonoghue starred for several seasons in RTE’s popular drama series “The Clinic” and also featured in the mini-series “The Tudors”.
In 2010 he completed a major role in “The Rite” with Anthony Hopkins. Colin ODonoghue is now starring in the hit U.S. tv series “Once Upon A Time”.
IMDB entry:
O’Donoghue was born and raised in Drogheda, County Louth, in a Roman Catholic family. He initially attended Dundalk Grammar School, and then The Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin.
At age 16, O’Donoghue went to Paris, France, for a month to learn the French language. Colin’s early career was mainly split between theatre and television work in Ireland and the UK.
In 2003, Colin won the Irish Film and Television Award for “Best New Talent” for his role as Norman in “Home For Christmas.
Genevieve O’Reilly was born in 1977 in Dublin. She moved to Australia at the age of 20 and pursued a career in acting. Whilst in Australia she acted in the two Matrix sequels. In 2005 she came to London and her films since then have included “The Young Victoria” and “Forget Me Not”. In 2016 she received rave reviews for her performance for TV’s “The Secret”.
Up and coming Irish actor Robert Sheehan was born in Portlaoise in 1988. He is best known for his roles in television’s “Misfits”,”Love/Hate” and “Red Riding”. His films include “Song of a Raggy Boy” and “Ghostwood”.
Lisa Richard’s Agency page:
Robert made his debut in Aisling Walsh’s acclaimed feature film Song For A Raggy Boy and went on to appear in a number of feature films includingA Dublin Story, Ghostwood, An Creatur, Summer of the Flying Saucers,Season of the Witch opposite Nicolas Cage and Ron Pearlman for Atlas Entertainment/Relativity Media, Cherrybomb directed by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn for Generator Entertainment/Little Film Company andKilling Bono directed by Nick Hamm for Cinema Three/Generator.
On television he appeared as a series regular in Foreign Exchange(Magma Film/9 Newtwork Australia) and Young Blades (Insight/PAX TV) as Prince Louis, he also appeared in The Clinic (Parallel Films/RTE), Bel’s Boys (ITV) and Rock Rivals (Shed Productions/ITV) and Bittersweet (RTE) Robert appeared in the recurring role of BJ in the BAFTA Award winning mini-series Red Riding, a trilogy of films based on the novels of the same name by David Peace – Nineteen Seventy-Four directed by Julian Jarrold,Nineteen Eighty directed by James March and Nineteen Eighty Threedirected by Anand Tucker all for Revolution Films/Channel Four. Robert appeared as Nathan in the first two series of Misfits, the hit comedy drama produced by Clerkenwell Films for E4, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor in 2009.
Robert Sheehan
He appeared in the leading role of Darren in the first three seasons of Love Hate written by Stuart Carolan, directed by David Caffrey for Octagon Films/RTE for which he was nominated for a Best Actor (TV) IFTA. Other television includes The Borrowers produced by Working Title for BBC, Me and Mrs Jones for Hartswood Films/BBC and the BAFTA Award winning Accusedcreated by Jimmy McGovern and directed by David Blair, also for BBC. He was most recently seen on screen as Simon in The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones directed by Harald Zwart for Constantin Films/Sony Pictures. On stage he appeared at the Old Vic Theatre in the title role inThe Playboy of the Western World, directed by John Crowley. He has recently completed filming leading roles in Begin the Beguine directed by Ari Gold for Grack Films , Anita B for Jean Vigo Italia and on The Road Within for Troika Picture
Joseph Fiennes was born in 1970 in Wiltshire. He is the younger brother of Ralph Fiennes. In 1973 he moved to Ireland with his family and was educated there for some years. His film debut was in 1996 in “Stealing Beauty”. His other films include “Shakespeare in Love”, “Elizabeth””Killing Me Softly” and “The Darwin Award
Despite the long shadow cast by his older brother, Ralph Fiennes, actor Joseph Fiennes carved out a comfortable niche in compelling independent and foreign features. Like many actors from England, Fiennes studied theater, particularly Shakespeare, where he delved into the finer nuances of his craft while performing the classics. He did struggle, however, in those early years, living hand-to-mouth while performing on the stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company. But he finally emerged to become an international star with his winsome portrayal of a young and lovesick Bard in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998). The Oscar-winning film propelled his profile into the stratosphere, giving Fiennes his pick of projects at that time. But instead of enhancing his newfound stardom, he followed his own path by returning to the stage while churning out a string of often little-seen independents, only to occasionally emerge in larger films like “Enemy at the Gates” (2001), “The Great Raid” (2005) and “Running with Scissors” (2006). Ironically, Fiennes often found himself accosted by the tabloid press for his exploits with various models and actresses, including Naomi Campbell and Catherine McCormack, despite being intensely private; perhaps a result of him casting off the typical trappings of being a successful and talented performer.
Born on May 27, 1970 in Salisbury, Whiltshire, England, Fiennes was the youngest of six siblings and one half of fraternal twins born to Mark, a farmer and photographer, and his mother, Jini (a.k.a. Jennifer Lash), author of The Burial (1961), The Dust Collector (1979) and Blood Ties (1998). The Fiennes family moved around the British Isles quite a bit, which included a stay in West Cork, Ireland. By his own count, Fiennes had changed schools some 14-odd times. When he was 16, he finished school and attended art college in Suffolk, only to switch to working at the National Theatre as a dresser and eventually performing with the Young Vic Youth Theatre. Fiennes received a grant to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and after graduating in 1993, embarked on his performing career in earnest. He spent two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which proved to be a mixed blessing. While receiving excellent notices for his performances, including a portrayal of Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter’s “Son of Man” (1995), Fiennes was suffering financial distress, paying out more than he was taking in.
Despite the early struggle, he managed to advance his career with turns opposite Helen Mirren in “A Month in the Country” (1994) and Bernard Hill in “A View From the Bridge” (1995). He finally began to climb out from his doldrums with his television acting debut on “The Vacillations of Poppy Carew” (ITV, 1995), which he followed with a noted performance as a young gay man in Bernardo Bertolucci’s romantic drama “Stealing Beauty” (1996). Following well-regarded theatrical turns as Troilus in “Troilus and Cressida” (1996) and Silvius in “As You Like It” (1996), Fiennes gained some much-needed momentum when he landed leading roles in three high profile features. In “The Very Thought of You/Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence” (1998), a low-budget comedy about three friends who fall for an American expatriate, he was cast as the sensitive Laurence, who passes his time teaching elderly women how to play bridge. He followed as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who is the childhood love of the eventual Queen of England (Cate Blanchett) in the somewhat controversial biopic “Elizabeth” (1998). In this version, directed by Shekhar Kapur, the relationship between the monarch and her favorite is depicted as a carnal one, which belied the established history.
Fiennes was launched to international stardom with his next film, “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), in which he played a lovesick William Shakespeare struggling to write “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirates Daughter” while embarking on a forbidden love with the daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow) of a wealthy merchant. Written by acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard, “Shakespeare in Love” won a surprise Academy Award for Best Picture. But instead of capitalizing on the film’s success, the atypical star balked at major Hollywood features and instead returned to the London stage to star in “Real Classy Affair” (1998). He rounded out a banner year with a starring role in the romantic comedy of errors, “The Very Thought of You” (1998), but suffered a creative step back with the outlandish comedy thriller “Rancid Aluminum” (2000). Following another acclaimed return to the stage in the title role of Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II” (2001) at the Crucible Theatre, Fiennes was cast opposite Jude Law and Rachel Weisz to form a triangular romance in the WWII-era drama “Enemy at the Gates” (2001). Playing a Russian soldier adept at propaganda, who uses Law’s exploits as a marksman to create a hero during the siege of Stalingrad, the actor handled a difficult role with aplomb. He was better served with a leading role in the erotically-charged drama of sexual obsession “Killing Me Softly” (2001).
After strong turns playing a recently released political prisoner in the long-delayed British-made drama “Leo” (2002), Fiennes returned to the historical biopic when he played the German monk and activist Martin Luther in the European production of “Luther” (2003). Expanding his horizons to animation, he voiced Prince Proteus, the best friend of the legendary sailor “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas” (2003). After portraying Berowne in Trevor Nunn’s superb production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (2003) for the Royal National Theatre, Fiennes made a welcome return to the world of Shakespeare on the big screen, adroitly playing the role of Bassanio opposite Al Pacino’s Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” (2004). He next played an army officer stricken by disease after surviving the Bataan Death March in “The Great Raid” (2005), based on the true story of the liberation of the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in the Philippines during World War II. In “Running With Scissors” (2006), he was the 33-year-old son of an unorthodox psychiatrist (Brian Cox) who enters into a sexual relationship with a young boy (Joseph Cross) sent to live with them after leaving his dysfunctional family.
Continuing to take on roles in independent films rather than reach for superstardom, Fiennes starred in “The Darwin Awards” (2007), playing a paranoid obsessive-compulsive former detective a la “Monk” who becomes an insurance assessor and falls in love with his partner (Winona Ryder) while investigating a series of bizarre accidents. Following a turn as the real-life James Gregory, the censor officer and prison guard for Nelson Mandela (Dennis Haysbert) in “Goodbye Bafana” (2007), he played a tough, but muted convict who helps a career criminal (Brian Cox) bust out of prison in the intelligent, but little-seen crime thriller “The Escapist” (2009). That fall, Fiennes made a surprising move to American primetime on “FlashForward” (ABC, 2009-2010), a sci-fi series starring Fiennes as the head of an FBI unit investigating the cause of a mass time travel incident that has shaken up the planet. After that show was canceled following large scale promotion declaring it the next “Lost,” Fiennes starred as Merlin on “Camelot” (Starz, 2011), a well-received retelling of the King Arthur tale that was not renewed due to the cable network’s logistical challenges with production. Undeterred, Fiennes stayed on the small screen and joined the second season of Ryan Murphy’s popular horror series, “American Horror Story: Asylum” (FX, 2012- ), where played an ambitious priest in 1964 who founded a sanitarium run by a sadistic nun (Jessica Lange).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Ralph Fiennes was born in 1962 in Suffolk. In 1973 his family moved to Ireland where he was educated for some years. He first came to film fame with his evil performance in “Schindler’s List” and then in 1994 he starred in the U.S. in “Quiz Show”. Other films include “The English Patient”, “Red Dragon” and “The End of the Affair”.
His IMDB entry:
Ralph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes was born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, England to Mark Fiennes, a photographer, and Jennifer Lash, a novelist, the eldest of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus Fiennes, a musician; Sophie, a producer; and Joseph Fiennes, an actor.
Fiennes has been honored with two Academy Award nominations, the first in 1994 for his performance in Steven Spielberg‘s Oscar-winning Best Picture, Schindler’s List (1993). Fiennes’ chilling portrayal of Nazi Commandant Amon Goeth also brought him a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA Award, as well as Best Supporting Actor honors from numerous critics groups, including the National Society of Film Critics, and the New York, Chicago, Boston and London Film Critics associations. Four years later, Fiennes earned his second Oscar nomination, for Best Actor, in another Best Picture winner, Anthony Minghella‘s The English Patient (1996). He also garnered Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations, as well as two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations, one for Best Actor and another shared with the film’s ensemble cast.
Patricia Driscoll was born in 1927 in Cork. She replaced another Irish actress Bernadette O’Farrell in the popular British television series “The Adventures of Robin Hood” as Maid Marian. Her film debut was in 1955 in “Timeslip”. Ms Driscoll was married to actor Duncan Lamont. Other films include “Charley Moon” and “The Wackiest Ship in the Army”. Patricia Driscoll died in 2020 aged 92.
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Mandatory Credit: Photo by Studio Canal/Shutterstock (9978095b)
1956, Patricia Driscoll, Max Bygraves, Guy Hamilton, British Lion, Film , B&W, Portrait,
Charley Moon – 1956
Director: Guy Hamilton
Film PortraitPatricia Driscoll
Carmel Quinn was born in Dublin in 1925. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1954 and began making appearances on the ‘Arthur Godfrey Show’ on television. She has appeared in numerous stage musicals such as “The Sound of Music”, “Wildcat” and “Finian’s Rainbow”.
Carmel Quinn is an Irish entertainer who has appeared on Broadway, television and radio since immigrating to the United States in 1954.
Carmel Quinn
Quinn was born and educated in Dublin. Her father was a violinist and the family was musically inclined. She began her career in Dublin singing with local bands, the most prominent of which was the Johnny Devlin Orchestra in the Crystal Ballroom, although her singing had been recorded as early as 1942, when she was a teenager. She also sang at Dublin’s Theatre Royal with the house orchestra and Jimmy Campbell. She was noted for one of her first song, “The Isle of Innisfree“
After coming to the United States in 1954, she appeared on the Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts radio program in 1955 and won the contest. Her voice and performing style was compared to that of Judy Garland and other popular singers. She became a regular on the show, appearing daily, singing and telling funny anecdotes about her life. She went on to appear on the television version of Arthur Godfrey and His Friends. Unlike many of the so-called “Little Godfreys”, whom Godfrey capriciously dismissed from his shows and left with bitter feelings, Quinn remained a frequent guest throughout Godfrey’s television career and appeared on the CBS radio version of Arthur Godfrey Time, which he hosted until 1972. She continued to be a favourite with audiences and made guest appearances on The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom (three times between 1957 and 1960) The Ed Sullivan Show, The Joe Franklin Show, Match Game, Candid Camera, and other variety and talk shows.
Carmel Quinn and Burt Bacharach at the Grammy Awards Dinner at the Hotel American. March 14, 1969. (Photo by Vernon Shibla/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images)
She continued to record, and many of her early recordings have been reissued on CD. In 1991, she was the second woman to receive the John F. Kennedy Award for excellence in her field. She continues to perform her cabaret show throughout the United States as well as maintaining a commitment to numerous American and Irish charities. Quinn has been a longtime resident of Leonia, New Jersey, acquiring her first home there after coming to the United States.
Quinn was married to Irish businessman and impresario William “Bill” Fuller (1917–2008); the marriage eventually ended in divorce. Quinn never remarried. The couple had four children, Michael, Jane, Terry and Sean. Michael predeceased his parents, dying from an undiagnosed cardiac ailment in 1988, aged 31.
Max Adrian was born in 1902 in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. He made his film debut in 1934 in “The Primrose Path”. Although primarily a stage actor, he did make a number of memorable film appearances in such films as “Kipps” in 1941, “Pool of London”, “The Deadly Affair”, “The Music Lovers” and “The Boyfriend”. He died in 1973 in Wilford.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Grandiose Irish stage, film and television character player Max Adrian, a noted classical performer and musical comedy revue star with a highly distinctive voice and “old school” acting style, was born Max Bor on November 1, 1902, in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland. The son of Edward Norman Cavendish Bor and wife Mabel Lloyd Thornton, Max studied at the Portora Royal School and showed early interest in the performing arts. An intermission singer/dancer at a silent film theatre, he made his stage debut in the chorus in 1925 and proceeded to gain experience on the West End.
Following extensive repertory experience, Adrian (who was occasionally billed as Max Cavendish) enjoyed his first transcontinental stage hit with “First Episode”, which toured throughout England and later transferred to Broadway in 1934. He went on to find wide personal success with his roles in “Troilus and Cressida” and “The Doctor’s Dilemma” toward the end of the decade. Joining the Old Vic company in 1939, he scored as “The Dauphin” in “Saint Joan”, then continued supremely with John Gielgud‘s company at the Haymarket Theatre in the mid-1940s as “Puck” in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Osric” in “Hamlet” and “Tattle” in “Love for Love”.
A founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and, much later, Laurence Olivier‘s National Theatre, Adrian earned widespread admiration for his work on the lighter side as a singer/comedian on the post-WWII musical revue stage. Many were produced by his long-time companion Laurier Lister (1907-1986). He also later performed eloquently, if outrageously, in one-man shows about George Bernard Shaw and the lesser successful “Gilbert and Sullivan”.
Following his revue success, the often-bespectacled actor traveled to America in 1956 to appear in Leonard Bernstein‘s operetta, “Candide”, on Broadway. Adrian stayed and pursued a career working in such summer stock productions of “Pygmalion” as Alfred as Doolittle, “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” as “Jourdain”, “The Merchant of Venice” as “Shylock”, and “The School for Scandal” as “Sir Peter Teazle”, but never established a strong footing. He returned to London in 1959 to appear in Noel Coward “Look After Lulu!”, which later was taken to Broadway.
In the early 1960s, Adrian became a member of Peter Hall‘s nascent Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon, wherein he appeared in “As You Like It”, “Twelfth Night” and “Troilus and Cressida”, as well as the non-Bard productions of “The Duchess of Malfi”, “The Devils” and “The Hollow Crown”. He also was a founding member of Olivier’s National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1963, wherein he supported Peter O’Toole “Hamlet” as “Polonius”. He also went on to appear in “Saint Joan”, “Uncle Vanya”, “The Recruiting Officer” and “The Master Builder”.
Dying of a heart attack in 1973, the prolific stage actor, survived by his partner, was paid tribute by such luminaries as Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness and revue co-star Joyce Grenfell.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.n
Dictionary of Irish Biography:
Adrian (Bor), Max (1903–73), actor, was born 1 November 1903 in Ireland, the son of Edward Norman Cavendish Bor, a Bank of Ireland agent (or manager), and Mabel Lloyd (née Thornton). The family lived successively at Maryborough, Callan, and Waterford. Max was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen (1918–21), and made his first stage appearance in the Gaiety theatre, Douglas, Isle of Man, as part of the chorus of ‘Katja the dancer’ in 1926. Having made his London debut in 1927 with a walk-on part in a production of ‘The squall’ at the Globe theatre, he continued working in London, and later appeared in New York (in 1934), and with various provincial repertory companies. It was not until his season at the Westminster theatre in 1938 that he came to prominence. Following a well received portrayal of Pandarus in a modern-dress production of ‘Troilus and Cressida’, he added several Shavian roles to his repertoire, most noticeably the Dauphin in ‘Saint Joan’ and Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonnington in ‘The doctor’s dilemma’. He had continuing success on joining John Gielgud’s company at the Haymarket, where from 1944 to 1945 he secured a variety of roles, including Tattle in ‘Love for love’, Puck in ‘A midsummer night’s dream’, Arnold in ‘The circle’ and an acclaimed Osric in ‘Hamlet’.
Noted for his versatility, Adrian interspersed his work in classical theatre with appearances in popular revues, notably ‘Light and shade’ (1942), ‘Tuppence coloured’ (1947), ‘Oranges and lemons’ (1948) and ‘Airs on a shoestring’ (1953), which ran for almost two years at the Royal Court. A founder member of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company (later the RSC), he worked with the company in 1960 and 1963 and earned excellent notices for his performances as the Cardinal in ‘The duchess of Malfi’ and Feste in ‘Twelfth night’. He subsequently joined the newly established National Theatre Company, playing, among other parts, the Inquisitor in ‘Saint Joan’, Serebryakov in ‘Uncle Vanya’ (both in 1963) and Brovik in ‘The master builder’ (1964). He had lengthy international tours with his one-man shows, ‘An evening with G.B.S.’ (1966) and ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’ (1969). With Laurier Lister he co-wrote Against our hearts (1937), and turned his hand to directing with ‘We proudly present’, which was staged at the Duke of York’s theatre (1947), and co-directed and performed in ‘Fresh airs’ (1956).
His cinematic debut came in 1934 in The primrose path; thereafter he appeared in numerous films including The young Mr Pitt(1942), Henry V (1946), and The Pickwick papers (1952). In the 1950s and 1960s he made many television appearances, taking parts in Perry Mason (1959), Doctor Who (1965) and Up Pompeii!(1969), and also worked on radio. He made a belated, and interesting, return to cinema in two Ken Russell films, The music lovers (1970) and The devils (1971). As an actor, he was known for his stylistic accuracy and rather camp style. He died 19 January 1973 at his home in Shamley Green, Surrey. The National Portrait Gallery, London, holds several portraits, including one by Cecil Beaton from 1949
Elizabeth Begley was born in 1907 in Belfast. Her film debut was in “Sons and Lovers” in 1960. Her other movies include “The Leather Boys” and “!The Outsider”. She had an extensive television career and of particular note is “Harry’s Game” in 1982. She died in 1993.
“Ulster Actors” website entry:
Authoritative and naturally gifted actor of both stage and screen renown, who for almost twenty years was the indesputable Grande Dame of Ulster Theatre and was at the centre of the hugely productive coterie at large in the Group Theatre Belfast from 1940 to 1959.
Before that she was an occasional member of Richard Hayward’s Belfast Repertory Theatre, appearing in two Hugh Quinn plays at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin in 1937, taking the snugly fit role, despite her thirty years, of the Widow McKeown in ‘A Quiet Twelfth’ and later was Miss Shiels in the Falls Road set ‘Collecting The Rent’. In 1938, she joined the newly formed Northern Ireland, Irish Players, which included Joseph Tomelty and Beatrice Duffell amongst it’s numbers and appeared at the Empire Theatre, Belfast in two early offerings presented in June 1939, Somerset Maugham’s ‘The Letter’ and Tomelty’s restructured ‘Barnum Was Right’, originally entitled ‘The Beauty Competition’.
During the forties she built a formidable reputation as a virtuoso character actor with the Group Players in productions such as Joseph Tomelty’s wartime Belfast set ‘Poor Errand’ and his black comedy, the retitled ’Right Again Barnum’, both 1943 and Patricia O’Connor’s ‘Select Vestry’ 1945.
In the latter half of the decade she took leading roles in many praiseworthy Group presentations, including Harry Sinton Gibson’s ‘Bannister’s Cafe’, featuring a young Patrick Magee, Cecil Cree’s ‘A Title For Buxey’ and Tomelty’s masterwork ‘All Soul’s Night’, all 1949.
Her reputation by this stage was now as big as her repertoire and she saw in the new decade with highly tuned central performances in plays as diverse as Sinton-Gibson’s family at war drama, ‘The Square Peg’ 1950 and the J.R.Mageean/Ruddick Millar quasi-farce ‘Arty’ 1951.
These were heady days indeed for the Group Players, whose nucleus comprised of the most proficient actors then available in Northern Ireland. The early fifties proved equally as fertile and she endorsed her Queen Of Ulster Theatre status with majesterial characterizations, appearing as Teresa in Patrick Riddell’s ‘The House Of Mallon’1952, as Mrs Connor in Michael J. Murphy’s drama ‘Dust Under Our Feet’ 1953 and as Marona in Joseph Tomelty’s ‘Is The Priest At Home?’ 1954.
Now vital to the fortunes of the Group Players, she commanded an elevated credit rating in virtually every production she chose to appear in, during what was incredulously the final years of the company.
Memorable performances included her Martha Gomartin in ‘That Woman At Rathard’, Sam Hanna Bell’s adaptation of his novel ‘December Bride’ and the mother Agnes Mahaffy, with Margaret D’Arcy in the title role of St John Greer Ervine’s potent melodrama ‘Martha’, both 1955.
In 1958, an intimation as to the future of the Group as a bona-fide repertory venue was severely tested when writer Gerald McLarnon’s eve of ‘The Twelfth’ observational piece ‘The Bonfire’, was forced to transfer to the Grand Opera House.
It’s perceived politically sensitive content alarmed certain members of an illiberal Board Of Directors and due to the attendant brouhaha, the play perhaps enjoyed more success than it otherwise merited, but did boast an illustrious cast, with Begley herself, James Ellis and Colin Blakely in prominent roles. The following year the Group’s administrative hierarchy faced another examination, one which would create an artistic impasse too intractable to overcome.
The well documented ‘Over The Bridge’ incident resulted in the disintegration of the Group Players and Begley, who due to other commitments was not in the cast of Sam Thompson’s veritable classic which premiered at the Empire Theatre Belfast in January 1960, saw the door close on a momentous twenty year chapter in her professional life.
A new career on-screen awaited and she was quickly off the mark, making two television appearances in as many months at the end of 1959, with choice roles in ‘Armchair Theatre’ plays, an eye catching debut in ‘Worm In The Bud’ and a masterclass pairing with J.G.Devlin in Tomelty’s ‘A Shilling For The Evil Day’, screened by UTV the day after the official launch of the station on October 31st.
In the early years of the 1960′s she found no shortage of work, particularly on the small screen, where between 1960/62 she guested in several plays and series and included her first film role, an assured little cameo as Mrs Radford in director Jack Cardiff’s estimable interpretation of D.H.Lawrence’s ‘Sons And Lovers’ 1960.
On television she had a high level of exposure on many top rated shows of the day, such as ‘Z Cars’ 1962, ‘No Hiding Place’ 1963 and ‘The Plane Makers’ 1964, ensuring her future, for the short term at the very least, in a rapidly evolving medium.
Notable among small screen successes in the mid to late sixties was her role as Unionist politician’s wife Ethel Kerr in Sam Thompson’s ‘Cemented With Love’ 1965, which also courted controversy, but mercifully was eventually screened intact, with J.G.Devlin and Harold Goldblatt heading a strong cast. Sadly Sam Thompson died just weeks before broadcast, but no doubt would have been satisfied that common sense ultimately prevailed.
In the seventies there was little change to her television schedule, with a relentless run of co-starring roles during a two year period, the best of which was arguably Dominic Behan’s Home Rule inspired teleplay ‘Carson’s Country’ 1972, in which she featured prominently in a cast including an inevitable J.G.Devlin, Harry Towb and Sam Kydd.
From that point her routine followed the familiar sixties template of guest starring roles in popular television series and the periodic play, with the exception of a regular appearance as Bridget McCarthy in the 1976 urban social drama ‘The Crezz’.
She marked her sixth decade as a professional actor, playing a subsidiary part in writer/director Tony Luraschi’s IRA infused film drama, ‘The Outsider’ 1980 and two years later aged seventy five, she played her final role, a stock-in-trade portrayal as Mrs Duncan in the much lauded ‘Harry’s Game’ 1982. Elizabeth Begley was undoubtedly one of the most prolific actors to emerge from what is regarded as the golden age of Ulster theatre, a redoubtable and highly efficient player who later brought her guile and and composure to a much wider square- eyed audience.
The above “Ulster ctors” entry can also be accessed online here.
Brian F. O’Byrne was born in 1967 in Mullagh, Co. Cavan. He won widespread critical acclaim for his stage performances in Martin McDonagh’s “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” and “The Lonesome West”. The plays were first staged by the Druid Theatre in Galway and then on to London and huge success on Broadway. O’Byrne stayed on in the U.S. and acted in mnay fine plays on Broadway. He guest starred in the successful TV series “Oz”. His films included “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004, “The Blackwater Lightship” with Angela Lansbury and “No Reservations”.
TCM Overview:
Brían O’Byrne was that rare kind of actor who effortlessly navigated the worlds of film, television and the stage. The Tony Award-winning O’Byrne gained acclaim for his multilayered performance in the Broadway production of “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” (1998), “The Lonesome West” (1999), and the off-Broadway play “Frozen” (2004), in which he portrayed a sympathetic serial child killer. O’Byrne’s versatility landed him a number of memorable film roles, most notably playing a priest in the Academy Award-winning drama “Million Dollar Baby” (2004) opposite Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank. He proved his mettle on television, with high-profiles roles on the Showtime drama “Brotherhood” (2006-08) and the ABC sci-fi series “FlashForward” (2009-10). But it was O’Byrne’s earnest portrayal of a likeable cheating husband on the HBO miniseries “Mildred Pierce” (2011) that catapulted him to A-list status in Hollywood and proved that he was undeniably one of the most compelling and dependable performers in the business.
Anna Manahan
Brían Flynn O’Byrne was born on May 16, 1967 in County Cavan, Ireland. After training at the Samuel Beckett Center and Trinity College in Dublin, the twenty-something O’Byrne moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. He landed minor parts in several short films and on the sitcom “Valerie’s Family” (NBC, 1986-1991). He also starred in a few Irish feature dramas such as “The Last Bus Home” (1997) and “The Fifth Province” (1997), the latter of which saw him portray a tormented writer in search of a mythical province that promises magic and passion. While he built up his TV and film acting credits, O’Byrne also had a thriving career on stage. His memorable performance in the 1998 Broadway production of “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” earned him a Tony nomination for Best Actor that year, followed by another Tony nod for Best Actor in 1999 for his role in “The Lonesome West.” The year 2004 had several milestones for O’Byrne. Not only did he win that year’s Tony Award for Best Actor for portraying a sympathetic child murderer in the off-Broadway production of “Frozen,” he also won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor for his compelling performance as a personable child-molesting priest in the play “Doubt.”
Brian F. O’Byrne
In 2004, O’Byrne co-starred in the critically acclaimed drama “Million Dollar Baby” as a priest who dissuades a boxing trainer (Clint Eastwood) from performing euthanasia on his fallen and disfigured protégé (Hilary Swank). In the late 2000s, O’Byrne’s career gained momentum on television. He had a recurring role on the crime drama “Brotherhood” (Showtime, 2006-08) as the lead character’s (Jason Isaacs) Irish cousin and right-hand man, and was a regular on the sci-fi series “FlashForward” (ABC, 2009-2010), about a mysterious event that causes everyone on Earth to simultaneously lose consciousness for a few minutes and see visions of their future.
Oliver Platt & Brian F. O’Byrne
In 2011, he co-starred on the television remake of the mini-series “Mildred Pierce” opposite Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, and Evan Rachel Wood. Based on James M. Cain’s 1941 novel and set in post-Depression America, the series followed Winslet’s character, a single mother trying to raise her children without her first husband, played by O’Byrne, whom she threw out of the house after she caught him cheating. For his portrayal of a surprisingly likeable character on the series, O’Byrne earned a 2011 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Barry McEvoy was born in 1967 in Belfast. He made his film debut in 1993 in “Gettysburg”. He had a leading role in Barry Levinson’s “Everlasting Piece”. His other films include “Veronica Guerin” and “Five Minutes to Heaven”.
Ian Whitcomb was born in Woking, Surrey in 1941. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin. In 1965 he had a hit song “You Turn Me On”. In 1972 his first of many books on popular music was published “After the Ball”.
Greer Garson was born in 1902 in Manor Park in Essex. Much of her childhood was spent in Co Down in Northern Ireland. She began her career on the London stage and was spotted by MGM’s Louis B. Meyer and brought out to Hollywood in 1938. Her first film with MGM was “Goodbye Mr Chip” with Robert Donat. During the early 1940’s, she was one of the most popular star. “Mrs Miniver”, “Random Harvest” and “Madame Curie” among others were hugly popular. She starred with Walter Pidgeon in several films. She died in Texas in 1996.
Helmut Dantine & Greer Garson
David Shipman’s Obituary in The Independent:
She was a successful stage actress when the head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, went to a West End play called Old Music (1937) on the (mistaken) assumption that it was a musical. Her performance impressed him enough to offer a contract, but his studio did not know what to do with a broad-faced, university-educated thirtyish British actress; so, this being the era of typecasting, they saw her as another Binnie Barnes, whose forte was to chase after men, money or both.
Illness prevented Garson from following this path (the film was called Dramatic School) and she languished till Sam Wood cast her in Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), which he was to direct in Britain. She did not relish the role, since she was due to die only screen minutes after marrying and humanising the dry schoolteacher Mr Chipping. Robert Donat collected a popular Oscar for playing him, but Garson’s brief contribution was equally vital. C.A. Lejeune, the film critic of the Observer, spoke of her “vivid grace” and Graham Greene admired “the short-lived wife [who] lifts the whole picture into – we are tempted to call it reality – common sense and tenderness, a sense of happiness too good to last”.
On her return to Hollywood she was forced into the studio’s chosen image – a New York sophisticate, jagged with sophistication in huge hats – squabbling and making up with Robert Taylor in Remember? But her Mrs Chipping was uppermost in executive minds when casting Pride and Prejudice (1940), based on a stage version which had been bought for Norma Shearer and Clark Gable. Garson and Olivier were much more sensible choices, even if Olivier later observed: “Dear Greer seemed to me all wrong as Elizabeth . . . she was the only down-to-earth sister but Greer played her as the most affected and silly of the lot”. However, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote that she had “stepped out of the book, or rather out of one’s fondest imagination: poised, graceful, self-contained, witty, spasmodically stubborn and as lovely as a woman can be.” Nevertheless those who tend to Olivier’s view sighed for her presence during the recent BBC adaptation, in which Jennifer Ehle completely missed Lizzie’s sense of self-mockery.
Garson’s performance reversed MGM’s concept of her, and she replaced Shearer in the title role of Mrs Miniver (1942) when that actress refused to play the mother of a grown-up son. He was played by Richard Ney, who was actually years younger than Garson: 14, in fact, though at the time it seemed less, since MGM’s publicists had lopped years off her age. She obliged them by waiting till the film had gone its rounds before making him her second husband, but as far as the studio was concerned the film had made her the biggest star on the lot.
Greer Garson
It was a movie showered with Oscars, including Best Film, Best Actress (Garson) and Best Director (William Wyler). Garson made cinema history by making an acceptance speech that lasted 45 minutes: new rules were brought in to stop this happening thereafter. The story of an “ordinary” British family through Dunkirk and the Blitz, it struck a particular chord with the Americans, who had just entered the war.
Teresa Wright with Walter Pidgeon & Greer Garson
Winston Churchill told Parliament that it had done more for the British war effort than a flotilla of destroyers. Yes, and Garson epitomised the courageous British housewife, the domestic ideal, partnering the equally sunny Walter Pidgeon, with whom she was to make eight films in all; but what with Mrs M rounding up a German paratrooper in the garden and no mention of rationing it was hardly realistic. Wyler, when he arrived in Britain with the Army, admitted that he would have made a very different picture if he had been here first.
Better altogether was Random Harvest since, as adapted by the same four writers, including James Hilton (who had written the original novel as well as Goodbye Mr Chips), it aspired only to romantic melodrama. Ronald Colman was the amnesiac officer who meets and falls in love with a music- hall star played by Garson on Armistice Day 1918 and marries her; and who later doesn’t recognise her when she becomes his secretary. Accompanied by some publicity about the lady’s short stage kilt and tights, the film was a second box-office bonanza (at a time when few New York cinemas showed their films for more than a week, these ran for 10 and 11 weeks respectively at Radio City Music Hall).
MGM had forced Shearer into retirement and had let Myrna Loy, “the perfect wife” go; Garbo had withdrawn for the duration; Crawford, who had hoped to inherit the mantle of Metro’s First Lady, saw it (to her chagrin) bestowed on Garson, who also inherited a role intended for Garbo – Madame Curie (1943), with Pidgeon as Monsieur. James Agate didn’t care for it but took the occasion to observe that it was time “to recognise Greer Garson as the next best film actress to Bette Davis”.
MGM had just signed her to a new seven-year contract without options, and reinforced her new persona, that of a patrician matriarchal figure, in two period family dramas, Mrs Parkington (1944), with Pidgeon, and The Valley of Decision (1945), with Gregory Peck. “Gable’s Back and Garson’s Got Him” was the way the studio publicised his first post-war film, Adventure (1946), but it was a slogan much derided – partly because the plot degenerated (depending on how you lok at it) from romantic comedy to religious allegory, and partly because Clark Gable let it be known that he loathed it.
The movie marked the start of a gradual decline in Garson’s fortunes, and the next, Desire Me (1947), was the only film to be issued without a director credit in the studio’s history. This was hardly her fault, but co-star Robert Mitchum observed that he stopped taking acting seriously when she needed 125 takes to say “No”. Garson and Pidgeon were put into a comedy in an attempt to change the image, but Julia Misbehaves (1948) was chiefly remarkable for ill-using its source, Margery Sharpe’s clever novel The Nutmeg Tree.
Garson’s fans returned when she played Irene to Errol Flynn’s Soames in That Forsyte Woman (1949), based on part of Galsworthy’s saga, but they stayed away from a more obvious attempt to retrieve them, The Miniver Story (1950).
With the exception of Mankiewicz’s Julius Caesar (1953), in which she was Calpurnia, her last films for the studio were mediocre. She was considered for the role Grace Kelly eventually played in Mogambo but the producer, Sam Zimbalist, considered her too mannered. Like Fox’s Betty Grable, her only constant rival on the box-office lists, she had become a liability, but because their names had been so indelibly associated with these studios for so long, they were kept on well after they had outlived their appeal.
A Western at Warners, Strange Lady in Town (1955), confirmed this and, having married a wealthy Texan, Garson didn’t need to work. She accepted only occasional roles that she really wanted to do, including Auntie Mame (1958) on Broadway, replacing Rosalind Russell; Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960); an imperious Queen Mary, by this time a sort of alter-ego, in Crown Matrimonial (1974), for television; and Aunt March in a television Little Women (1978). She spent her last years in Dallas, where her work for good causes was unstinting, including the campus theatre endowed in her name.
Joe Mankiewicz, who was at MGM at the same time, was once talking to me about its producers. “They all had a girl on the side. Eddie Mannix had – what was the name of that Irish-Jewish redhead?” “Greer Garson?” I ventured, wondering that what to me was one of the most regal of stars was to him just another half-forgotten “protegee”. Could this be the same Greer Garson who indignantly rejected the self-parody number in Ziegfeld Follies written for her by Roger Edens and Kay Thompson, which Judy Garland so eagerly played?
David Shipman
Greer Garson, actress: born Co Down, Northern Ireland 29 September 1903; married 1933 Edward A. Snelson (marriage dissolved 1937), 1943 Richard Ney (marriage dissolved 1947), 1949 Elijah “Buddy” Fogelson (died 1987); died Dallas, Texas 6 April 1996.
David Shipman’s obituary in The Independent can be accessed online here.
Declan Mulholland was born in Belfast Northern Ireland in 1932. His film debut was in H.M.S. Defiant” in 1962. His other films include “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, “Guns in the Heather”, “Time Bandits” and the Star War movies. He played Father Michael in the “Fr Ted” series. Declan Mulholland died in London in 1999.
Lloyd’s Of London, poster, (aka LLOYDS OF LONDON), Freddie Bartholomew, Tyrone Power, Madeleine Carroll, 1936. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Freddie Bartholomew was one of the most popular child stars in U.S. films of the 1930’s. He was born in 1924 in Lodon. He was raised in England and made two films there before going to Hollywood in 1934, He played the young David in the wonderful 1934 “David Copperfield” which was directed by George Cukor. His other films included “Anna Karenina” with Greta Garbo, “Little Lord Fauntleroy” with Mickey Rooney and “Captains Courageous” with Spencer Tracy. He served in the Airforce during World War Two and did not pursue a film career but became an asvertising executive in New York. He died at the age of 67 in Floria in 1992.
TCM Overview:
Curly-haired Hollywood child star whose earnest presence, refined British diction and angelic looks established him as a boxoffice favorite in the 1930s and 40s. After a few minor roles in British films, the ten-year-old was signed by MGM to star as Dickens’s hero in David O. Selznick’s production of “David Copperfield” (1935). He went on to play Greta Garbo’s son in “Anna Karenina” (1935) and followed up with his two most popular roles: as the American boy who learns he is the heir to a dukedom in “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1936) and as a pampered rich brat who is rescued and educated by rough fishermen in Rudyard Kipling’s adventure yarn, “Captains Courageous” (1937).
With a salary eclipsed only by that of child superstar Shirley Temple, Bartholomew was earning $2,500 a week by the late 30s, though his career began to wane after numerous court battles between his guardian-aunt and his parents over his earnings. After service in WWII he made a stab at a career in vaudeville and nightclubs before turning to TV, where he hosted a daytime program in the 1950s and then became associate director of a New York TV station. In the mid-1950s he again switched careers, this time joining New York’s Benton and Bowles agency as an advertising executive.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Fiona Shaw is one of Ireland’s greatest actresses who has a leading reputation on the British stage. She was born in Cork in 1958. She trained at RADA in London. Her films include “My Left Foot” in 1989, “Mountains of the Moon”, “Jane Eyre”, “Persuasion” and in the U.S. in “The Black Dahlia” and of course Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter movies.
TCM Overview:
inroads onscreen as well since the late 1980s. Intense and fiercely intellectual off-stage and on, this statuesque brunette with a great aquiline profile graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1982 and promptly made her debut in “Love’s Labour’s Lost”. Since then, she has turned in one powerful–sometimes controversial–stage performance after another, including Celia in “As You Like It” (1985), Erika in “Mephisto” (1986), a near-psychotic Katherine in “The Taming of the Shrew” (1987-1988) and “Mary Stuart” (1988 and 1996), earning a reputation as a superb classical actress/daredevil. Shaw’s most hotly-debated role was as “Richard II”, which she played in 1995 and which marked her sixth collaboration (since 1988) with her longtime friend, director Deborah Warner. The two made their NYC debut in 1996 with a hit staging of “The Waste Land”, T. S. Eliot’s 433-line poem about death and resurrection. Critics praised Shaw for her brilliant performance in the tour de force which had the actress standing alone on a bare stage, conjuring up a bleak gallery of characters lost in a realm of spiritual blight.
Shaw’s best-known film role to date was as the sympathetic therapist with whom the cerebral palsy-afflicted Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) falls unrequitedly in love in “My Left Foot” (1988). The actress has easily moved between comedy and tragedy onstage and her film performances have also captured her facility with these shifts. Shaw made her debut as a nun caring for children during World War II in “Sacred Hearts” (1984) and following her “My Left Foot” success, has shown her versatility in diverse role ranging from the free-spirited wife of explorer Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) in “Mountains on the Moon” (1990) to her scene-stealing turn as the sex-starved head of Pileforth Academy in the comedy sequel, “Three Men and a Little Lady” (1990) to a lascivious liberal in “London Kills Me” (1991).
She played over-the-top villainesses in the unworthy comedies “Super Mario Bros.” and “Undercover Blues” (both 1993) before essaying fine supporting turns in “Persuasion” (1995), as the sister of the heroine’s true love, and “Charlotte Bronte’s ‘Jane Eyre'” (1996), as the dreadful aunt. Under Warner’s watchful eye, she recreated her stage triumphs as “Hedda Gabler” (1993, with Stephen Rea) and “The Waste Land” (1995). Shaw once again appeared onscreen alongside Rea and newcomer Eamonn Owens as Mrs. Nugent, the bane of existence for Owens’ “The Butcher Boy” (1997) in Neil Jordan’s acclaimed dark comedy about a serial killer. She was wasted in support of Sean Bean and Sophie Marceau in Bernard Rose’s remake of “Anna Karenina” (also 1997) and Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman as a senior intelligence officer in the disastrous big screen version of “The Avengers” (1998).
Shaw lent her intelligence to the role of Hedda Hopper in the acclaimed HBO movie “RKO 281” (1999), which traced the behind the scenes machinations during the making of “Citizen Kane” in 1940-41. In 2000, she appeared in the popular BBC miniseries “Gormenghast” as Irma Prunesquallor and was prominently featured in Warner’s big-screen debut “The Last September” as a sophisticated Anglo-Irish woman caught up in the decline of a great house. Co-starring stage legends Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon and executive produced by Jordan, “The Last September” was well-received by critics and art-house audiences, with Shaw singled out for praise for her virtuoso performance. Just weeks after the film hit American screens the actress returned to the stage at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre as the tragic heroine in another Warner-helmed project, “Medea”.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
As the daughter of legendary director John Huston and granddaughter of Oscar-winning actor Walter Huston, it was no surprise that actress Anjelica Huston found success and acclaim in Hollywood. Representing the third generation of Hustons to win an Academy Award, the actress emerged from the long shadow cast by her father with an Oscar-winning turn in “Prizzi’s Honor” (1985). Prior to her triumph, Huston struggled to make her way as a model and actress, while her biggest claim to fame up to that point was being in a longtime romantic relationship with Jack Nicholson. After “Prizzi’s Honor,” however, Huston came into her own and embarked on a long, vibrant career full of sterling performances. Just a few years later, she found herself back in Oscar contention with “Enemies: A Love Story” (1989) and the excellent crime noir, “The Grifters” (1990). Having also turned in a dynamic performance as a spurned mistress in Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989), Huston had established herself as one of Hollywood’s top actresses. While she occasionally stepped into lighter roles like Morticia Addams in “The Addams Family” (1991) and “Addams Family Values” (1993), she earned critical appreciation for her performances in “Agnes Browne” (1999) and “Iron Jawed Angels” (HBO, 2004), which no doubt would have made her father proud.
Sean HughesSean Hughes was born in London in 1965. He was brought up in Dublin. He won the Perrier Comedy Award as a rising young comedian. He was seen in Alan Parker’s 1991 film about Dublin bands “The Commitments”. His other films include “The Butcher Boy”, “Fast Food” and “Puckoon”. On television he has starred in “The Last Detective” and also did a stint in “Coronation Street” in 2007.
“Guardian” interview from 2012:
“It horrifies me to say this,” says Sean Hughes, “but my dad came to see a show I did years ago and fell asleep due to drunkenness.” The relationship between father and son wasn’t cosy – “We used to high-five each other in the middle ground of self-hatred,” he says. But nearly two years after Sean senior died of leukaemia, aged 72, the comedian is tackling his father’s illness and death head-on, through his new stage show, Life Becomes Noises.
“Just don’t use the C-word,” he says, hunched over a coffee in a cafe, his face fuller in middle age.
The C-word? “Cathartic,” he says.
Hughes, who was the youngest winner of the Perrier award for comedy in 1990, rates this show as his best work. “I feel I’m doing something good.”
He says he has his father to thank for this new vitality. “I’ve said before that my father never gave me any support, but there was a weird rough justice in him dying. He gave me the inspiration to write this show, against his will, and it made me grow up. It pushed me towards the next phase of my life. If there is a ‘presence’, I just hope he knows he’s been extremely helpful, because I think he’d have been proud of what I’ve done. I find that a solace.”
Hughes’s father was a driving instructor – at a time when drink-driving wasn’t illegal, he points out. He was also keen on the horses and Hughes makes his stage entrance dressed as a jockey. Surely his father wasn’t hoping he’d take up racing as a career? “He would have been delighted. He didn’t want much in life.”
This was the result, he assumes, of his father’s own thwarted ambitions – disappointments later masked by drink. That generation didn’t analyse their lives in the way Hughes’s own north London neighbours might these days. “It wasn’t a thing you did, especially in a working-class environment, so he muddled along.”
The show, which combines laugh-out-loud humour, world-weary indignation and poignant anecdotes is set between his father’s hospital bed and the family hearth in Dublin. Hughes zig-zags through his feelings about healthcare for the terminally ill, his family dynamics and whether we take death too seriously.
He started thinking about writing it on the way home from his father’s funeral. No sentimentality was his first rule. He showed the script to his two brothers, aware that his version of events wasn’t necessarily theirs. “I was a bit sheepish … my younger brother, Martin, found it very hard to read but was aware that I’d taken poetic licence. My older brother, Alan, was a bit taken aback – positively so. I’m so glad they didn’t go, ‘You can’t say that.'”
He didn’t consult his mother. “She wouldn’t understand and I don’t want to hurt her. What I do is an alien world to her and she’d be wondering why I’m saying those things about our family to other people. Of course, I’m terribly disappointed – I’d love my mum to be the biggest champion of [my work], but I accepted years ago that it wasn’t going to happen.
“I harboured a lot of resentment in my youth. I had no support when I was going into a creative career. I had a part-time job in a supermarket and my mum and dad would have been delighted if they’d given me a full-time job. That was their ambition for me. That hurts. They weren’t being hurtful but it made me quite hard towards them, which was probably unfair.
“One reason I haven’t got children is that I’m too selfish, but I think each generation looks to their parents’ faults to make them better people.”
Hughes was born in London but the family moved back to Dublin when he was six, where he was sent to a new school at the height of the Troubles sporting the provocative combination of a bow-tie and a Cockney accent. “Dad’s best joke … I looked and sounded like Tommy Steele.”
Hughes left for England at the earliest opportunity, after which, he says, “we weren’t very good on the phone”.
He has tried to avoid being mawkish in writing about his father. “A few comics have talked about their fathers dying and they’ve been tributes. It doesn’t ring true to me. I wanted it to be more deep, and real. Things weren’t great, but let’s celebrate that. There are positives to be taken out of traumas.”
Our attitude to death is too serious, he says. “It should be more like seeing someone off on a great adventure. But there are too many set rules. The priest saying the words doesn’t really know the person. They should be beautiful occasions and they are not.”
He wonders why the doctors couldn’t have made it clear that his dad wouldn’t get better. “He was too old and weak to survive, but they don’t tell you that. I guess it’s the whole Catholic thing of miracles, that you could get better, which is bullshit. And when you look at the shitty bed they die on … It sounds flippant when I say cancer wards should be jolly. But they should be like children’s wards. There should be colours, not dark shapes.”
Sometimes major events are life-changing for a while, then you revert to type, says Hughes, who was caught up in the 2004 tsunami, in Sri Lanka. “I’m lucky to be alive – but it changes you for two days, then you’re back watching Neighbours at lunchtime.
“My philosophy is that you can’t force change. I matured very late in life. The idea of not drinking five years ago would have been alien to me. I was blocking things out with drink. You realise that when you’re dealing with a death you can’t block it out. But you have to come to all these places on your own. Once you realise that, you become a more rounded person.”
Being thrust into grief has lowered his expectations of life without admitting defeat, which he says is a good thing. It has made him more generous – up to a point. “As you get older, you want more quality time and that means putting yourself out. I try not to be so judgmental, to show people more love. I can’t give you a list. It’s a general state. Having said that, I’m probably still too controlling … and I don’t suffer fools. I got that from my father. That will never change.”
Marriage and children are not on his agenda: “I like to be on my own. I can deal with that.”
Hughes is able to distance himself from the personal content of the show – which received warm reviews on its Edinburgh Fringe debut run – and see it as an acting job. “It’s not necessarily about my father any more. It’s about how it affects the audience. If you’re telling the truth, you’re pretty much telling everyone’s truth.
“The reaction I wanted was the same reaction that I had after I saw Death of a Salesman. I wanted people to go out and cherish their relationships.”
Over the year before his father’s death, Hughes and his father reached an accommodation. “If I look at it coldly, if someone’s not going to get better, I’d rather they died quickly. But that time allowed us not to fix our relationship but to amend it. They were quite cherished times. It was kind of beautiful when I used to do insignificant things with him – go to the shops, get some bread, you know …”
He checks himself. “I’m not going to romanticise it. It wasn’t like running through a field of daisies.”
To illustrate his point, he recalls a trip to Kilmainham Gaol museum in Dublin, where leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed by the British. “My parents lived in a self-imposed Catholic prison so what I tried to do near the end was take them out. I love history and Kilmainham is amazing. I was delighted that my dad was having a good time and asked if he was enjoying himself. He went: ‘Yeah, but your brother Alan would have enjoyed it more because he likes history.””
It may be a cliche but Hughes – now 46, and a non-smoking, vegetarian teetotaller – admits that the process of losing his father has changed him. He would get drunk to sit at his bedside and tell him how he felt, or to warn his father that news about his recovery prospects would one day be negative.
Gradually, it dawned on him that it was kinder to be less brutally honest. Towards the end, when his father asked, “Nothing’s going to happen to me, is it?”, he was able to say no, to make his father feel safe.
“He wasn’t a brilliant man but he did make me feel safe and I should have respected him more for that. That was my way of thanking him, telling him ‘I love you’ because I didn’t say it enough.”
The above “Guardian” obituary can be accessed online here.
Alison Doody was born in Dublin in 1966. She began her career as a model but in 1985 won a part in the James Bond film “A View to a Kill”. She played opposite Liam Neeson and Mickey Rourke in !A Prayer for the Dying” and opposite Pierce Brosnan in “Taffin”.
Thinking she could use the pocket money, she said yes. Modeling proved to be both fun and lucrative, and very soon she did it professionally. Her modeling contracts led to commercial work, which would take her around the world. O
In Hollywood she made “Major League 2” with Charlie Sheen and then won the lead role opposite Harrison Ford and Sean Connery in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. She retired for some years to raise her family but has recently returned to acting in the television series “Waking the Dead” and RTE’s “The Clinic”.
IMDB entry:
Alison Doody was born in Dublin in 1966, in a well-off family. She is the youngest of three children. She was educated in a convent, where she gained a passion for the arts. She later studied at the National College of Fine Arts in Dublin, but left because she lacked the motivation and thought she would take a year off to think it out. Meanwhile, while sitting in a café with friends, she was approached by a still photographer who asked her if she would be interested to model.
ne day, a casting director saw her work and suggested she try acting instead. She was sent to London at age 19, where she quickly won an audition to appear in the new James Bond film, A View to a Kill (1985). She so loved acting that she pursued a career in that direction. After her first film, she shot a few TV dramas in London and in Dublin, but her big break came when she was cast as Aryan seductress Dr. Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
Apparently she made a huge impression on Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who loved her great sense of humor and her Grace Kelly looks. After Indiana Jones, which introduced her to Hollywood and to the United States, she was chosen to replace Cybill Shepherd as spokeswoman for L’Oréal. After that she shot a few B-movies in the United States, but at one point felt she missed Ireland too much, so she went back to Dublin. In 1994, she put her career on hold to spend more time with media heir Gavin O’Reilly, whom she had been dating for two years. In 1996 they married, and later had two children. In 2002, she was asked to cameo in the ‘Michael Caine (I)_ comedy The Actors (2003), and there she regained a lust for the movie industry.
The following summer, she shot King Solomon’s Mines (2004) with co-star Patrick Swayze, and it’s then that the whole ball started rolling again. In 2005, she and her husband divorced and she decided to re-launch her stalled career, but she quickly realized how difficult it was to break into this kind of business for a second time, especially after ten years away from the camera. Recently she appeared in the short film Benjamin’s Struggle (2005), directed by newcomer James Breese, and played a role in the well-known British series Waking the Dead (2000). In a recent interview, she said she was thrilled to be acting again, but added that she wasn’t willing to accept anything for the sake of working. She is determined to find the right part, but she also wants to do different things: “I’m fed up playing the nasty Nazi. I’d like to do something quite extreme.”
Madeleine Carroll was born in 1906 and was an English actress, popular both in Britain and America in the 1930s and 1940s. At the peak of her success she was the highest-paid actress in the world, earning $250,000 in 1938.
Carroll is remembered for her role in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The 39 Steps (1935). She is also noted for abandoning her acting career after the death of her sister Marguerite in the London Blitz, to devote herself to helping wounded servicemen and children displaced and maimed by the war.
Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street (now number 44) in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, daughter of John Carroll, an Irish professor of languages from County Limerick, and Helene, his French wife. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, with a B.A. degree; while at university she appeared in some productions for the Birmingham University Dramatic Society. She was a French mistress at a girls’ school in Brighton for a year.
Carroll wanted to act and left teaching to look for roles. She got a job in the touring company of Seymour Hicks.
She made her stage debut with a touring company in The Lash. Widely recognised as one of the most beautiful women in films (she won a film beauty competition to start herself off in the business), Carroll’s aristocratic blonde allure and sophisticated style were first glimpsed by film audiences in The Guns of Loos in 1928.
Carroll had a big hit with I Was a Spy (1933), which won her an award as best actress of the year. It was directed by Victor Saville.
She played the title role in the play Little Catherine. Abruptly, she announced plans to retire from films to devote herself to a private life with her husband, the first of four.
Carroll attracted the attention of Alfred Hitchcock and in 1935 starred as one of the director’s earliest prototypical cool, glib, intelligent blondes in The 39 Steps. Based on the espionage novel by John Buchan, the film became a sensation and with it so did Carroll. Cited by The New York Times for a performance that was “charming and skillful”, Carroll became very much in demand. The success of the film made Hitchcock a star in Britain and the US, and established the quintessential English ‘Hitchcock blonde’ Carroll as the template for his succession of ice cold and elegant leading ladies.[13] Of Hitchcock heroines as exemplified by Carroll film critic Roger Ebert wrote:
The director wanted to re-team Carroll with her 39 Steps co-star Robert Donat the following year in Secret Agent, a spy thriller based on a work by W. Somerset Maugham. However, Donat’s recurring health problems intervened, resulting in a Carroll–John Gielgud pairing. In between the films she made a short drama The Story of Papworth (1935).
Ronald Colman and Madeleine Carroll in The Prisoner of Zenda, 1937
Poised for international stardom, Carroll was the first British beauty to be offered a major American film contract. She accepted a lucrative deal with Paramount Pictures and was cast opposite George Brent in The Case Against Mrs. Ames (1936).
On radio, Carroll was a participant in The Circle (1939) on NBC, discussing “current events, literature and drama” each week. In 1944, she was the host of This Is the Story, an anthology series dramatising famous novels on the Mutual Broadcasting System. At the tail end of radio’s golden age, Carroll starred in the NBC soap opera The Affairs of Dr. Gentry (1957-59). She also was one of a group of four stars who rotated in taking the lead in each week’s episode of The NBC Radio Theater (1959).
Carroll returned to Britain after the war. She was in White Cradle Inn (1947). She went back to the US and was reunited with MacMurray for An Innocent Affair (1948). Her last film was The Fan (1949).
A commemorative monument and plaques were unveiled in her birthplace, West Bromwich, to mark the centenary of her birth. Her story is one of rare courage and dedication when at the height of her success she gave up her acting career during World War II to work in the line of fire on troop trains for the Red Cross in Italy after her sister was killed by a German air raid – for which she was awarded the American Medal of Freedom. She was also awarded the Legion of Honour by France for her tireless work in fostering relations postwar amity between France and the United States.
To her family’s chagrin, she left Trinity to join the Gate Theatre, where she worked with Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir. She was also a member of the original Radio Éireann players.
Noelle Middleton
Noelle Middleton, who has died aged 89, was a well-known Irish actor and BBC presenter in London in the 1950s who returned to her native Sligo in the 1970s and to a very different career as an oyster farmer.
A spartan 19th century boathouse in Culleenamore in the foothills of Knocknarea inherited from her father became her home, and from it she supplied many local restaurants from carefully tended beds in Ballisodare Bay. “I learned about oysters just like I learned about acting,” she once said. “I just did it.”
The only daughter of Wilbur Middleton, a wealthy mill owner (whose family was related to the Yeatses) and his wife, Lillian Martin, Evelyn Noelle Middleton was born in Sligo in 1926 and educated at Hillcourt School – now Rathdown – and at Trinity College Dublin, where she read modern languages and was a member of the dramatic society.
In the early 1950s she moved to London and developed a successful career in film, as well as being one of the first BBC television announcers. Her films included Happy Ever After and Three Men in a Boat, while her role as Capt Alison Graham in Carrington VC, in which she co-starred with David Nivenand Margaret Leighton, won her a nomination for the British Film Academyawards in 1954.
She also starred in The Iron Petticoat with Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn and in John and Julie with Peter Sellers and Sidney James. In the mid-1970s, after her divorce from her husband, Keith Woodeson, a Madison Avenue executive, she divided her time between London and Sligo. Her last screen appearance was in 1988 in a short period drama filmed for RTÉ called Rose Dear. A perfectionist, proud and stubborn but kind and with a keen sense of humour, she was intensely private and reclusive. She didn’t encourage friendship, but was besotted by cats and crazy about the hundreds of seals that snaked across the long sandbanks in the bay. She was a vegetarian, but admitted to treating herself to a dozen oysters “now and again”.
She is survived by her brother, Gerald Middleton, and his wife, Zoe, in Sydney, Australia, and by her cousin Ian Doyle of Sligo.
Richard Leech was born in Dublin in 1922. He studied at Trinity College, Dublin, qualifying as a doctor in 1945. He then turned to acting as a career. Virtually all his career was in British film and television. Among his films are “The Dambusters” in 1955, “Night of the Demon” with other Irish actors, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis, “The Moonraker” in 1957 and “The Shooting Party” in 1985. Richard Leech died in 2004 in London at the age of 81.
Richard Leech’s “Guardian” obituary:
Richard Leech, who has died aged 81, practised as a doctor in Dublin for a year before deciding to try his luck as an actor. He never looked back – within two seasons he was a leading man on the West End stage.
His embodiment of military officers, police inspectors and, inevitably, doctors, not to speak of monarchs, politicians, conspirators, courtiers, butlers and philanderers, established Leech’s career on stage and screen as one of the most intelligent and cultivated character actors of the postwar generation.
With his sturdy build, snub nose, crinkly hair and intense gaze, Leech was not only a useful all-round player, but also one whose clarity of speech made him audible in the largest auditorium. At a time when stage diction was in decline, this was an asset.
So was his assumption of transatlantic accents. He was not the first Irishman whose voice could reproduce a transatlantic note with authenticity. It served him well in his first two plays for HM Tennent Ltd, London’s most influential management, in the British premieres of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (1948) and John van Druten’s The Damask Cheek (1949).
Leech’s most notable West End performances ranged from the title-role in Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1948) to Dr Emerson in Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1978-79). His numerous film credits included The Dam Busters, A Night To Remember, Ice Cold In Alex, Young Winston, Gandhi and The Shooting Party, and he appeared on television in Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, A Woman Of Substance, Dickens Of London, Edward VII, Occupations, Brassneck, and as Inspector Duval in Interpol Calling. From 1969 to 1971 he was one of the four GPs in the BBC’s twice-weekly drama serial The Doctors.
Richard Leech
Born Richard McLelland in Dublin and educated at Haileybury College, Hertfordshire, and Trinity College, Dublin, he was intended for medicine. Having obtained three medical degrees, in 1945 he practised successfully in Dublin for a year. At 20 he began working semi-professionally at the Gate, Dublin, under its directors Michéal MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards, for whom he made his debut as a Nubian slave in The Vineyard. He made his first appearance in London in 1946 with an Irish company in three plays at the Glanville, Walham Green, south-west London: Robert Collis’s drama, Marrowbone Lane, in which he played several small parts, including a surgeon; then in The White-Headed Boy and Drama At Inish.
In 1947, Leech spent a year with a repertory company in Hereford before being put under contract by a London management company. His first role was in an Irish country house play, Elizabeth Bowen and John Perry’s Castle Anna; and in Arthur Miller’s first work to reach the West End, All My Sons, in which he played Chris Keller, the surviving brother in a family headed by a parent responsible for the faulty design of wartime aircraft.
Leech’s voice came into its own in 1948, when he partnered Flora Robson in Shaw’s Captain Brasshound’s Conversion. As a philanderer in The Damask Cheek (1949), Leech was, according to Harold Hobson, “good in the honest ruggedness of a factory hand and farmer”.
Later that season, Leech won more plaudits as the somewhat pompous Humphrey Devize in the West End premiere of Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning, in which he later transferred or the first time to Broadway. But in between he acted with Gladys Cooper in Thomas Browne’s The Hat Trick (1950); and on returning from New York played Robert Catesby in a try-out, Gunpowder, Treason and Plot (Ipswich, 1951).
Richard Leech
In Noël Coward’s Relative Values (1951), Leech played an all-knowing butler, who according to a critic, “talks like Shaw with the accents of Coward and rolls out the syllables as though the part were entirely new: indeed he and Coward between them make us believe that it is”.
Back in the West End in 1954, Leech appeared in Jack Roffey’s No Other Verdict as a man wrongfully accused of murder; and in Charlotte Hastings’s Uncertain Joy (1955), he was the cruel father of a problem child befriended by a schoolmaster.
One of his best remembered roles came as Henry VIII in the premiere of Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons (1960). In another long run, The Right Honourable Gentleman (1964-65), Leech first played the husband of a woman who accused the statesman Sir Charles Dilke of adultery; and when Anthony Quayle left the cast, Leech took over the lead from him. He was a friend of Alec Guinness, and returned to the West End in 1968 in Guinness’s revival of TS Eliot’s The Cocktail Party.
Leech was never able to forget his days as a doctor, and in 1968 resumed his association with the medical world by becoming a regular columnist in the periodical World Medicine. His articles were headed Doctor In The Wings.
Leech’s first wife Helen Hyslop Uttley predeceased him. He is survived by his second wife, Margaret, and his actress daughter, Eliza.
· Richard Leeper McLelland (Leech), actor, born November 24 1922; died March 24 2004
Ronnie Carroll was born in 1934 in Belfast. He sang for the U.K. in the 1963 Eurovision Contest with the song “Say Wonderful Things”. The same year he was featured in the film “Blind Corner”.
“Telegraph” obituary:
Ronnie Carroll, who has died aged 80, was a Belfast-born plumber’s son who became the only singer to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest twice in a row; in later life he stood as a fringe candidate in several general and by-elections, during which he begged voters not to put a cross against his name in a bid to enter the Guinness Book of Records. Carroll first represented Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1962. His jaunty entry, Ring-A-Ding Girl ( “Ring-ding-a-ding-a-ding Ding-ding / She’s my ring-a-ding girl”) was not quite ludicrous enough to win the competition, though it came a creditable fourth out of 16. The following year he returned with the slightly better Say Wonderful Things but still managed to come fourth.
The first song only reached No 46 in the British pop charts, though the latter made No 6, and Carroll had one more hit, Roses are Red, which peaked at No 3 in 1962. But then, for all but the most dedicated Carroll fans, the trail went cold. After his showbiz career ended, a nightclub venture in Grenada, and drinking and gambling habits, combined to ruin him. At one point Carroll was reduced to running a hot food stall in Camden. He resurfaced as the Emerald Rainbow Islands Dream Ticket Party candidate for the 1997 Uxbridge by-election when, despite his determined efforts to score “nul points”, singing what he hoped would be a new hit single: “Don’t Vote for Me, Reg and Tina!”, 30 spoilsports put their cross against his name. “There’s nothing more demoralising than aiming low and missing,” he reflected.
He was born Ronnie Cleghorn on August 18 1934 in Roslyn Street, East Belfast, and first hit the big time when he won a “Hollywood doubles” competition at the Belfast Hippodrome, after switching from impersonating Frank Sinatra to the gravel-voiced Nat King Cole, fully blacked up, having contracted a bad chest infection. “I kept listening to Nat’s records until I got it right, and when I was introduced at the Hippodrome as Nat King Cole in the final, after doing Sinatra in the heat, it brought the house down,” he recalled. His success led to a place on the Hollywood Doubles touring stage show and in 1956 he had his first big hit with Walk Hand in Hand, which reached No 13 in the charts and earned him an appearance on the BBC programme Camera One. In 1959 he helped to launch the pop programme Oh Boy! with a 17-year-old Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde. By this time Carroll was something of a teen pop idol. “It might seem hard to believe,” he said in 2008, “but … screaming girls would climb on to trains as I was pulling into stations and they’d come in droves for me backstage. Droves. I had as much sex as any man could wish for.”
By the early 1960s he had married his first wife, the singer and actress Millicent Martin. But by the middle of the decade a youthful addiction to “pitch and toss” had developed into something more serious. On one occasion he flew to Las Vegas and blew £5,000 on the craps table in 20 minutes. “I walked out and had only enough for my cab fare,” he recalled. “I got back on a plane and flew to London. When I arrived home Millie said: ‘Did you have a good night?’ I replied: ‘Yes.’ ” The end of his marriage to Millicent Martin in the mid-1960s signalled the beginning of the end of his performing career . To console himself, Carroll hit the bottle.
When Sean Connery called round, he recalled, “I gave Sean a bottle of scotch and I had a bottle of vodka and after a few hours he said: ‘There’s a woman I fancy in Paris.’ But he couldn’t get off the floor so I phoned her and said: ‘Sean wonders whether you’d come over for a drink.’ Then I phoned a girl I liked, but she told me where to go.” After marrying his second wife, the Olympic runner June Paul, Carroll headed to the island of Grenada in 1972, to run a nightclub. But “there was a revolution in Grenada when we were there and we had sunk every penny we had into the nightclub,” he recalled. “There were no tourists left and we had no money to carry on.” Back in Britain Carroll continued to perform occasionally at holiday camps,ut eventually abandoned singing for a more profitable hot sausage stall at Camden Market. This he later combined with helping to run the Everyman Cinema and Jazz Club in Hampstead. When his second marriage ended, Carroll married and divorced a third wife, South African-born Glenda Kentridge.
His motivation for entering the political arena stemmed from a promise made to the raconteur and wit Peter Cook shortly before he died. “He told me: ‘Ronald, you must stand, promise me you will stand.’ Soon after that I thought, what have I done? Then he went and died on me. But a promise is a promise.” From 1997 he stood in several elections for “anti-politics” parties of various names, founded by the veteran environmental campaigner “Rainbow George” Weiss. In the 2005 general election he stood for the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Party in Belfast, and released a “comeback” album, Back on Song, which he described as “a soup bowl of feelings I’ve had for women – and family and animals – going back decades”. He had been planning to stand as a candidate in next month’s general election in the marginal Hampstead & Kilburn constituency as the “Euro-visionary” candidate. In a quirk of electoral law his name will still appear on the ballot paper which means that he could, theoretically, still win on May 7. Ronnie Carroll is survived by three sons and a daughter.
The above “Telegraph” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Sara Allgood was one of Ireland’s greatest actresses. She was a member of the Abbey Theatre Players and the first person to play Pegeen Mike in “The Playboy of the Western World in 1904. She was born in 1879 in Dublin. Her sister was the actress Marie O’Neill, the love of John Millington Synge. Sara Allgood made her film debut in 1929 in a leading role in Alfred Hitchcocks “Blackmail” which was made in Britain. In 1940 she went to Hollywood where she became one of it’s most profilic character actresses. She was nominated for an Oscar for her peformance in John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley” in 1941. Other films of note are “Lady Hamilton”, “Kitty”, “Cluny Brown”, “Between Two Worlds” and “The Spiral Staircase”. Sara Allgood died in 1950 at the age of 70.
Sara Allgood features extensively in Adrian Frazier’s “Hollywood Irish”.
“Short, rotund, apple-cheeked and extremely Irish, Sara Allgood joined Dublin’s Abbey Players in 1904 but it was nearly 40 years before she was asked to come to Hollywood. Once there she immediately made an impression as the strong and loving matriarch of the Welsh coal mining family in ‘How Green Was My Valley’. The role won her an Oscar nomination and led to a career as a busy character player. TheM majority of her work was at 20th Century Fox, where she performed in ‘Roxie Hart’ as a prison matron and ‘Jane Eyre’ as a kindly housekeeper, to name but two of her assignments.” – Barry Monush in “The Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors” . (2003).
IMDB entry:
Dublin-born Sara Allgood started her acting career in her native country with the famed Abbey Theatre. From there she traveled to he English stage, where she played for many years before making her film debut in 1918. Her warm, open Irish face meant that she spent a lot of time playing Irish mothers, landladies, neighborhood gossips and the like, although she is best remembered for playing Mrs. Morgan, the mother of a family of Welsh miners, in How Green Was My Valley (1941), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her sister Maire O’Neill was an actress in Ireland, and famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats was a family friend. Sara Allgood died of a heart attack shortly after making her last film, Sierra (1950).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com
UNSPECIFIED – JANUARY 01: (AUSTRALIA OUT) Photo of FILM POSTERS; Poster for Mother Wore Tights (Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns)
In 1915 Allgood was cast as the lead in J. Hartley Manners‘ comedy Peg o’ My Heartwhich toured Australia and New Zealand in 1916. She married her leading man, Gerald Henson, in September 1916 in Melbourne. She played the lead role opposite her husband in J. A. Lipman‘s 1918 silent film Just Peggy, shot in Sydney. Her happiness was short lived. She gave birth to a daughter named Mary in January 1918, who died just a day later, then her husband died of the flu in the outbreak of 1918 in November of that same year. After her return to Ireland Allgood continued to perform at the Abbey Theatre. Her most memorable performance was in Seán O’Casey‘s Juno and the Paycock in 1923. She won acclaim in London when she played Bessie Burgess in O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars in 1926.
After many successful theatre tours of America she settled in Hollywood in 1940 to pursue an acting career. Allgood was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as Beth Morgan in the 1941 film How Green Was My Valley.
Allgood, Sara (1883–1950), actress, was born 31 October 1883 in Dublin, daughter of George Allgood and Margaret Allgood (née Harold). Her father was a protestant printing compositor, son of an English army officer; her mother’s family were catholic, owners of a junk shop. There were four sons and four daughters. After her father’s death Sara was apprenticed to an upholsterer, and joined Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a group of revolutionary women founded by Maud Gonne MacBride (qv). She took part in amateur dramatics and was a founder member of the Irish National Theatre Society. Her first appearances (1904), while still in her daytime job, were in ‘The king’s threshold’ by W. B.Yeats(qv) and ‘Riders to the sea’ by J. M. Synge (qv). She stayed with the group which became the Abbey Theatre, and after successful appearances in the first Abbey play, Lady Gregory‘s ‘Spreading the news’, she became a professional actress (1905).
After disputes within the company Sara Allgood’s main rivals, Maire Quinn and Máire Ní Shiubhlaigh (qv), resigned and she was able to play some of the most important roles in the Abbey’s repertoire. It was claimed that she could, at short notice, perform sixty-five parts, including Deirdre in Yeats’s play of that name; she was Widow Quin in the first production of Synge’s ‘Playboy of the western world’ (1907). She was especially celebrated in tragedy, but in 1915 she played the heroine in an Irish-American romantic comedy, ‘Peg o’ my heart’ by John H. Manners, produced by a touring company in Australia. It proved very popular. Her stay in Australia was protracted until 1920, partly because she had married (September 1916) her leading man Gerald Henson, and the death (January 1918) of their only child Mary, shortly after her birth, was followed by Henson’s death in the devastating ’flu epidemic (November 1918).
The Abbey Theatre’s difficulties during the civil war were not resolved until the great success of ‘The shadow of a gunman’ and ‘Juno and the paycock’ by Sean O’Casey (qv). Allgood gave the finest performances of her life as Juno (1924) and as Bessy Burgess in ‘The plough and the stars’ (1926). Successful London productions and American tours of these plays followed, and she was very successful in London in James Bridie’s ‘Storm in a teacup’ (1936). From 1929 she increasingly relied on film work – she appeared in over forty films – and, living in Hollywood, California, took American citizenship (1945). She was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her part in How green was my valley (1941); she was, however, only offered small parts (generally Irish characters) which did not make full use of her abilities. Her last years in Hollywood were spent in disappointment and poverty. She died 13 September 1950 of a heart attack in Woodland Hills, California. Her sister Molly (Mary) was a successful actress as Máire O’Neill (qv).
Sources
Times, 15 Sept. 1950; Who was who in the theatre 1912–1976, i: A–C(1978); Elizabeth Coxhead, Daughters of Erin: five women of the Irish renascence (1979); Phyllis Hartnoll (ed.), The Oxford companion to the theatre (1983); Evelyn M. Truitt, Who was who on screen (1983); E. H. Mikhail (ed.), The Abbey Theatre: interviews and recollections (1988)
In the early 1950s the prevailing image of Maureen O’Hara, who has died aged 95, was one of a feisty heroine, red hair blazing, who was more than a match for her male co-stars. Big John “Duke” Wayne, whom she partnered in five films, said of her: “I’ve had many male friends in my life except for one, O’Hara; and she’s a great guy.”
The great director John Ford, with whom she also worked so often, referred to her as “a man’s kind of woman”.
In The Quiet Man (1952), Ford’s Irish pastoral-romantic-comedy, the blue-bloused, scarlet-skirted, bare-footed O’Hara, as Mary Kate Danaher, is first seen by Wayne as she tends her sheep. “Hey, is that real?” he asks. “She couldn’t be.”
At their second meeting Wayne tries to kiss her, and she tries to sock him. “Watch that scene, and you’ll see Duke put his hand up,” O’Hara once said. “He deflects my blow because he knew me so well. He knew I was for real. I was hitting him.”
Wayne’s defensive action had unintended consequences. “The pain went up under my armpit,” she said. “[Afterwards] Duke came up to me and said, ‘godammit, you nearly knocked my head off. Let me see your hand.’ Each finger was like a sausage [and] they sent me to hospital.”
Ford declared O’Hara to be “the best bloody actress in Hollywood”. She certainly was not that, but Ford, who had Irish roots, brought out her warmth and “Irishness,” and she became an important element in his repertory company.
Their relationship was never easy, but O’Hara loved the results of working with him. “So many films we made crying in our heart as we went to work every day,” O’Hara recalled, “but a great role in a great movie with somebody like John Ford was never difficult. That was heaven, even though you wanted to kill him.”
O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons, the second of six children, in a suburb of Dublin. Her mother was an accomplished contralto, and her father, a businessman, part-owned Shamrock Rovers football team. “We grew up on sport and music. All the great singers that would come to visit Dublin would come to our house for a musical evening,” she said. “We six kids, we used to sit at the top of the stairs and listen.”
Maureen was torn between wanting to be an opera singer or a football player. In the end she settled for acting, having been accepted by Dublin’s Abbey theatre at the age of 14. Three years later, during her theatrical training at the Abbey, she received a request to travel to London for a screen test at Elstree studios. As a result she landed two bit parts but, more significantly, she impressed the actor Charles Laughton, who could not forget her “hauntingly beautiful eyes”. Laughton and the producer Erich Pommer, the co-founders of Mayflower Productions, offered her a seven-year contract, and changed her name to O’Hara. Her first role was as a naive orphan girl involved with Cornish smugglers in Alfred Hitchcock’s corny Jamaica Inn (1939), opposite Laughton as the lip-smacking squire. On the set of that film she met the English film producer George Brown, whom she married that year at the age of 19. The marriage ended in divorce only two years later.
In 1939 Laughton also persuaded RKO studios to cast O’Hara as the Gypsy girl Esmeralda to his Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She gave both a sensual and touching portrayal, which immediately established her as a Hollywood star. Her career from then on was divided between colourful escapist entertainments and more serious black-and-white efforts.
Among the former were piratical and exotic adventure yarns such as The Black Swan (1942), The Spanish Main (1945), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), Bagdad (1949) and Tripoli (1950), the latter directed by Will Price, whom O’Hara married soon afterwards. In most of these films she was rescued from the villain by the hero, though the villain often seemed more in need of rescuing from her. O’Hara’s spirited character stretched the limits of Hollywood’s macho conventions. Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) has been championed by feminists because of the final scene when O’Hara, as a chorus girl, having submitted unwillingly to the role forced upon her, berates the audience of leering males. However, despite her celebrated monologue, which she delivers with passion, she eventually gives up her dreams of becoming a ballet dancer in favour of marriage.
In 1941, O’Hara played her first part for Ford in How Green Was My Valley, set in a Welsh mining town, in which her Irish accent, Donald Crisp’s Scottish and Walter Pidgeon’s American served for a Welsh accent. As Angharad Morgan, O’Hara has mostly to look beautifully lovelorn during her abortive romance with the pipe-smoking preacher Pidgeon, but has a fine scene with him in which she defends a single mother from attack. “What do the deacons know about it? What do you know about what could happen to a poor girl when she loves a man so much that even to lose sight of him for a moment is torture!”
O’Hara was often an exemplar of noble and defiant womanhood, not least in Jean Renoir’s This Land Is Mine (1943). In it, she was reunited with Laughton, who plays a mother-dominated schoolteacher secretly in love with O’Hara, a colleague who is working for the wartime resistance.
Now a resident star at 20th Century-Fox, O’Hara proved the perfect middle-class wife in Sentimental Journey (1946), Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Sitting Pretty (1948). But she was her tempestuous self again as a Southern belle in the period piece The Foxes of Harrow (1947), and in Rio Grande (1950), the last of Ford’s cavalry trilogy, in which she played the estranged Confederate wife of a Yankee colonel (Wayne), fighting over their son.
O’Hara played quite a few estranged wives, providing her with the opportunity to be sassy; battling over her twin daughters with Brian Keith in The Parent Trap (1961), and again with Wayne in McLintock! (1963), the latter containing a rerun of the taming-of-the-shrew theme from The Quiet Man, with Duke giving her a spanking in the distinctly non-feminist finale.
The last film she made for Ford was The Wings of Eagles (1957), in which she played the long-suffering wife of a war hero pilot (Wayne). Eleven years later the divorced O’Hara, with a grown-up daughter, married Charles Blair, a famous aviator.
She retired from films a few years later to live in the Virgin Islands and run a commuter sea plane service, Antilles Airboats, with her husband. “I got to live the adventures I’d only acted out on the Fox and Universal lots,” she said. However Blair was killed in a plane crash in 1978. She then became head of the company, the first woman president of a scheduled airline in the US.
Fortunately she was coaxed out of her 20-year retirement in 1991 to appear as John Candy’s domineering Catholic mother in Only the Lonely – she acted everyone else off the screen, a reminder of just how much the cinema had missed her. After that she appeared in three TV movies, including The Last Dance (2000), in which she played a retired teacher.
In 2005 she moved back to Ireland, settling in her house on a 35-acre estate, Lugdine Park, in west Cork, which she had bought with Blair in 1970. In 2012 she returned to the US to be closer to her family as her health declined.
Although O’Hara was never nominated for an Oscar, she received an honorary Academy award in 2014 in acknowledgment of a lifetime of performances that “glowed with passion, warmth and strength”.
She is survived by her daughter, Bronwyn, from her marriage to Price, and by a grandson and two great-grandchildren.
Maureen O’Hara, actor, born 17 August 1920, died 25 October 2015
Dana was born Rosemary Brown in London in 1951. Her parents returned to Ireland when she was a child. At the age on 18 she represented Ireland in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest and won the competition with the song “All Kinds of Everything”. She had a successful career as a popular singer then became a European Member of Parliament for five years. She then resumed her career in show business. Dana made one film “Flight of the Doves” in 1971 which also starred Ron Moody, Jack Wild and Dorothy McGuire. The film was directed by Ralph Nelson.
She entered politics in 1997, as Dana Rosemary Scallon, running unsuccessfully in the Irish presidential election, but later being elected as an MEP for Connacht–Ulster in 1999. Scallon was again an independent candidate in the Irish 2011 presidential election, but was eliminated on the first count.
Scallon was born in Frederica Street, Islington, North London, to Robert and Sheila Brown (née Sheerin). Her father worked as a porter at nearby King’s Cross station. A hairdresser by trade, he’d relocated his family from his native Derry in Northern Ireland because of the high unemployment there after the war. She was five when her parents were advised by their doctor to return to Derry because of the London smog, and the harmful effect it had on some of their children. (London had not yet benefited from the Clean Air Act 1956.) Their new home was on Derry’s Creggan housing estatewhere they stayed until 1967, when they moved to the newly built Rossville Flats complex in the Bogside, an area overlooked by the historic city walls.
Dana
Her parents were musical – her father played the trumpet in his own dance band, The Imperial All Stars, and her mother was their guest pianist. They had seven children in all: three sons and four daughters, including their third-born child Grace who died at eight months from a penicillin allergy. Fifth-born and youngest daughter Rosemary won the first talent contest she entered – an all-aged event at St Columb’s Hall when she was six. During her childhood she was taught to play the piano and violin, taught herself to play the acoustic guitar, sang in the school choir, and at one point, after years of ballet practice, considered becoming a ballet teacher. She took part in many more music and dance contests. In 1965, the now solo Rosemary Brown took part in a local talent contest at the Embassy Ballroom, where she won first prize – a chance to record a demo tape. Tony Johnston, a headmaster and part-time promoter who sponsored the competition, took her under his wing while she continued with her studies at Thornhill College, the Roman Catholic grammar school for girls she joined in 1963.
After gaining seven good grades in her GCE O-level exams, Rex Records (Decca) in Dublin received her demo and manager Michael Geoghegan signed her up. Her debut single was “Sixteen”, written by Tony Johnston, while the B-side, “Little Girl Blue”, was her own composition. It came out on 17 November 1967, but failed to take off, though local TV and radio began to show an interest in her. It was at this time that she adopted the professional name of “Dana”, which had been her school nickname. Now studying A-levelmusic and English, she became popular in Dublin’s cabaret and folk clubs at weekends, and was crowned Queen of Cabaret at Clontarf Castle in 1968. Rex Records’ secretary Phil Mitton suggested she audition for the Irish National Song Contest, due to take place in February 1969 – a victory would see her represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest. With mixed feelings due to nerves she made it through to the final in Dublin where she sang “Look Around” by Michael Reade, later released as her fourth single. Shown live on Irish television, Scallon came second to Muriel Day and “Wages of Love”, also written by Reade.
In December 1969 Tom McGrath, producer of the Irish National Song Contest, invited Scallon to try again next year, feeling that one of the entered songs, the ballad “All Kinds of Everything”, would suit her. Her second attempt to win the Irish contest was a success. Then on Saturday 21 March 1970, the eighteen-year-old schoolgirl performed the song at the Eurovision finals held in the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre, before an estimated viewing audience of two hundred million. Perched on a stool while wearing an embroidered white mini-dress, she was the last of twelve contestants to perform that night. After the voting had finished she was declared the winner with 32 points, beating the favourite, UK’s Mary Hopkin, with 26 and Germany’s Katja Ebstein with 12. Spain’s Julio Iglesias came equal fourth with Guy Bonnet of France and Henri Dès of Switzerland. This was Ireland’s first of a record seven successes in the contest.
The winning song was composed by two Dublin printworkers, Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith. The single was produced by Ray Horricks and arranged by Phil Coulter. Released on 14 March, it shot to #1 in the Irish singles chart before the contest began and stayed there for nine weeks. It also spent two weeks at the top of the UK singles chart on 18 and 25 April. It was also successful in Australia, Austria, Germany, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. The song went on to sell more than two million units.
Scallon’s debut album All Kinds of Everything, recorded at Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London, on the weekend of 25 April 1970, was released in June and included four tracks co-written by the singer, as well as a new recording of the album’s title track. Her follow-up single was issued in September, but Jerry Lordan‘s “I Will Follow You” failed to chart. The song that put an end to her one-hit wonderstatus was found on the album Barry Ryan 3. “Who Put the Lights Out”, written by Paul Ryan for his twin brother, was offered to her by their stepfather Harold Davison, the business partner of her agent Dick Katz. Her version, cut with Barry Ryan‘s producer Bill Landis, proved a strong comeback vehicle reaching #5 in Ireland. In the UK it became a #14 hit on 13 March 1971. There then followed three years of unsuccessful singles broken only by the Irish chart showing of “Sunday Monday Tuesday”, a #4 hit in December 1973. This lack of success caused her agent to recommend she join the former head of Bell Records Dick Leahy on his new label, GTO Records.
She debuted on GTO with “Please Tell Him That I Said Hello”, written by Mike Shepstone and Peter Dibbens. Within a month of its release in October 1974 it was #7 in Ireland. It took until the new year before making its UK chart debut in January. Boosted by Top of the Popsperformances on 6 February and 13 March, it climbed to #8 on 15 March 1975. This UK success gave the track a resurgence of popularity in Ireland where it rose to #7 again, this time in February. She also recorded a German version of the song. “Spiel nicht mit mir und meinem Glück” was a #27 hit in that country the same year. Scallon made a number of foreign singles, such as “Wenn ein Mädchen verliebt ist” (German, 1971), “Tu Me Dis I Love You” (French, 1975), and a Japanese version of “It’s Gonna be a Cold Cold Christmas” in 1976.
Her next single, “Are You Still Mad at Me”, a Geoff Stephens/Roger Greenaway composition, missed the chart. They then wrote another song for her. “It’s Gonna be a Cold Cold Christmas” was released four weeks prior to Christmas and gave her her second-highest UK chart position when it reached #4 on 27 December 1975. In Ireland it made #3, and the following year #12. At the end of the year Scallon collected two awards – Best Female Singer in Britain from the NME, and Best Female Singer from the TV Times. The success continued into 1976, with a cover of Eric Carmen‘s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” becoming a UK #31 hit on 13 March. In September however, while promoting her new single, “Fairytale”, she lost her voice. Her left vocal cord, which had been cauterized the year before, required urgent surgery to remove what turned out to be a non-malignant growth, as well as a small part of the cord itself. This caused some newspapers to report on the possibility that she might never sing again. Despite her inability to fully promote “Fairytale”, a disco number written by Paul Greedus and produced by Barry Blue, it became a UK #13 hit on Christmas Day, and was also her biggest international success since “All Kinds of Everything”. But having failed to regain her singing voice after the operation, she contacted Florence Wiese Norberg, a respected singing teacher. With her help she resumed live performances with a week-long engagement at Caesar’s Palace in Luton in December 1977.
Barry Blue started work on her fifth album soon after finishing work on Heatwave‘s second album, released in April 1978. Her final session at Utopia Studios in London ended two weeks before her wedding day in October. Issued in April 1979, The Girl is Back was the first LP she made that contained no cover versions, and the track that rocked the most, “Something’s Cookin’ in the Kitchen” by Dave Jordan, became its only UK hit single, reaching #44 on 14 April. A disappointing result after a marketing campaign that included a new look for Scallon, a music video, life-size posters in major cities, and retailers receiving bonus flexi discs. In Ireland it made #22. The album’s title track was also released, followed by “I Can’t Get Over Getting Over You”, which she sang live on Top of the Pops in October, her final appearance on the show. The sad and reflective track “Thieves of Paris”, written by Barry Blue and Lynsey de Paul, has been rated one of the stand out tracks on the album.[4] They also wrote her 1972 single, “Crossword Puzzle”, a #2 hit in Thailand.
A new phase in her career began after Pope John Paul II came to Ireland in September 1979, inspiring her to write with her husband the Irish chart-topper, “Totus Tuus”.
Outside her chart career, Scallon had remained a popular personality since her 1970 Eurovision win. She had played the part of a tinkergirl in Flight of the Doves (1971), a children’s adventure film starring Ron Moody and Jack Wild and directed by Ralph Nelson. She also performed in summer seasons at resorts and seasonal pantomimes as well as performing at venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall and a week of sell-out shows at the London Palladium. Scallon also performed extensively in cabaret venues and was voted Top Female Vocalist at the National Club Acts Awards in 1979. BBC Television gave her two shows of her own: a series of A Day with Dana in 1974 and four series of Wake Up Sunday in 1979. For BBC Radio she presented a series of I Believe in Music in 1977.
Having scored an Irish number one in January 1980 with the song that was based on the Pope’s motto: Totus Tuus, Latin for Totally Yours, the much larger American Christian market became a possible outlet for her music. Not long after returning home from a promotional visit to the National Religious Broadcasters conference in Washington, opened by US President Jimmy Carter, she was contacted by award-winning songwriter Kurt Kaiser, vice president of Word Records. He invited her back to the USA where she was offered a recording contract. Meanwhile, Warwick Records issued Everything is Beautiful in late 1980. Recorded in September at Pye Studios in London, the LP subtitled 20 Inspirational Songs was advertised on TV and became her biggest-selling album in the UK, reaching #43 in the chart on 10 January 1981. It was followed later that year by Totally Yours, her first Christian album for Word Records; the songs “Praise the Lord”, “The Soft Rain” and “Totus Tuus” were credited to “Dana and Damien Scallon”. As was “Little Baby (Grace’s Song)”, written while she was pregnant with their first child.
She was soon back in the studios again to make Magic in 1982, a pop album for Lite Records made at Morgan Studios and Maison Rouge Studios in London. It included four songs by her younger brothers John and Gerald Brown, as well as the single “I Feel Love Comin’ On”, written by Barry White, which peaked at #66 in the UK on 22 May. Collaborating with her younger brothers they wrote the official Northern Ireland 1982 FIFA World Cup song “Yer Man”, and she recorded it with the full squad before they headed to Spain for the finals. Following this, her second album for Word was completed; Let There Be Love contained up-tempo Christian pop, jazz, ballads, and an old Irish hymn sung in Gaelic called Ag Criost an Siol.
Scallon starred in a West End production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, staged at the Phoenix Theatre during the 1983 Christmas and New Year pantomime season. The venues first panto broke box-office records and was extended into February. She played Snow White for over fourteen years, each time in a different city, beginning the run at the New Theatre, Hull in 1982.
A tour of America took place in 1984 to promote her two Word albums. Appearances were made in concert halls, churches, colleges and also on TV and radio.
After fifteen years in show business Hodder and Stoughton published Dana – An Autobiography in 1985. It told the story of her childhood, married life and music career, as well as her growing devotion to God. At the same time as her book launch came the release of her fifties tribute album If I Give My Heart to You, featuring her last UK chart entry “Little Things Mean a Lot”, #92 on 13 July 1985. In Ireland in made #27, as did the album’s title track.
Due to work commitments in 1979, she wasn’t in the country when Pope John Paul II became the first pope ever to visit Ireland. But she eventually saw him in 1987 at the Superdome in New Orleans, having been invited there to perform “Totus Tuus” before a gathering of 80,000 or more. After her performance the pontiff made his way to the stage to personally thank her for writing the song.
Soon after completing a concert tour of England in early 1990, she took her family to Florida for an Easter holiday. Her break was interrupted by a request to fly to Irondale, Alabama and make a guest appearance at Eternal Word Television Network‘s (EWTN) tenth anniversary show. Afterwards, the network’s founder Mother Angelica enquired if her ex-hotelier husband would like to work there, setting up a retreat centre to look after the hundreds of visitors the network attracted each day. Then mid holiday she sang at a Rosary Rally in Palm Beach, and was asked to write a theme song for the Rosary. The result was The Rosary, an album released with Heart Beat Records in 1991 that has amassed over a million sales around the world.
By August 1991 the Scallons were living in Mountain Brook, close to EWTN’s headquarters where Damien now worked. Thoughts of winding down her career were dashed when her husband was asked if his wife would like to work there, presenting a music programme. Say Yes became the first TV series she made for them. Three more followed: We Are One Body, Backstage and Dana and friends. With this exposure she became a popular Catholic music singer, appearing at conferences and public gatherings across America. Heart Beat Records, the US Catholic music label, issued a number of her music and prayer albums.
To help celebrate the sixth World Youth Day event held in Cherry Creek State Park, Denver in 1993, she was invited to sing in the presence of Pope John Paul II the theme song for the occasion, “We Are One Body”, a song she composed herself. She also sang at the World Youth Day celebrations held in Paris in 1997, Toronto in 2002 and Sydney in 2008.
In June 1997, she received a letter from the Christian Community Centre in Ireland suggesting she run for the Irish presidency. Having no interest in politics at the time, and never having heard of that organisation, she threw the “incredible” proposal in the bin. But they persisted and similar mail arrived from other people. Then the media got involved. She eventually agreed to seek nomination as a candidate in the 1997 Irish presidential election, standing as an independent under the name Dana Rosemary Scallon. Her campaign was based on the Irish Constitution and her belief that it could only be amended with the agreement of the Irish people by public ballot. She later became the first-ever presidential candidate to secure a nomination solely from County and City Councils, rather than from members of the Oireachtas. Polling day was 31 October, and Scallon received 175,458 of the first-preference votes (13.8%), coming third to Fianna Fáil‘s candidate and eventual winner Mary McAleese. Before returning to America she told reporters: “I may not be a president, but I am a precedent.’
She was granted US citizenship in 1999, requiring her to swear an oath renouncing allegiance to any other state. That same year she again stood as an independent, this time winning a seat in the European Parliament, representing Connacht–Ulster. She campaigned on family values and her strong pro-life beliefs. Scallon is opposed to abortion in all cases, In 2013 she said “there is no legal or constitutional obligation for politicians to legislate for the deliberate killing of an unborn child and there is no medical evidence to support this radical change to how we treat our mothers and their children and the taking of an innocent and defenceless human life can never be justified”. She was also vocal for her opposition to divorce and same sex marriage, along with a Eurosceptic line on the EU. Scallon refused to associate with any political party despite Fianna Fáil making several approaches for her to join them. On becoming an MEPher eight-year stay in the US came to an end.
In 2001 she opposed a proposed amendment to the Irish constitution that would have legalised the “morning after pill” and IUD. The amendment was defeated in a referendum in 2002, although it was supported by the mainstream political parties. Scallon also had public disagreements at the time with the Catholic hierarchy (notably with Cardinal Desmond Connell), the latter wishing instead to negotiate a consensus solution.[10]
Returning to the world of entertainment in 2005, she spent seven weeks on the RTÉ television series The Afternoon Show, where she did a fitness routine with a trainer and lost fifteen pounds in weight in time for her eldest daughter’s wedding. In 2006, she and dancer Ronan McCormack were paired together in the RTÉ dance series Celebrity Jigs ‘n’ Reels. They made it to the final show and came second. That same year, Scallon and her husband launched their own music label, DS Music Productions.[12] One of the first albums released was Totus Tuus, a compilation of songs dedicated to the memory of Pope John Paul II and issued on the anniversary of his death. A children’s album was released in 2007, along with a DVD in 2008, entitled Good Morning Jesus: Prayers & Songs for Children of All Ages, which featured in a special series on EWTN. The Scallons and their new label were sued in 2007 by Heart Beat Records for copyright violations on several of the albums they’d recently released.[13]
Gill & Macmillan published her second autobiography in 2007. Her political career took centre stage in All Kinds of Everything. To coincide with the book launch, her first secular album since Forever Christmas a decade earlier, was released. A Thing Called Love was produced by her and her youngest brother Gerry, who also played guitar and keyboards, while her youngest son Robert played drums.
It was revealed on 7 October that Scallon had dual US and Irish citizenship, but she denied hiding this from the public, saying that her US citizenship, which involved her taking an oath renouncing allegiance to Ireland, was not an issue then or now and she had no reason to hide it.
On 5 October 1978, she married hotelier Damien Scallon at St Eugene’s Cathedral in Derry, where her parents were married. The couple first met in 1970 at his Ardmore Hotel in Newry, where a reception took place following a “Dana Place” street-naming ceremony in nearby Hilltown, to honour her recent Eurovision success. After a three-week honeymoon in Grenada the newlyweds set up home in Rostrevor, County Down. They have four children: Grace (born 1981), Ruth (born 1983), John James (born 1984), and Robert (born 1989).
Edward Mulhare was born in Cork in 1927. He acted at the Gate Theatre in Dublin before moving to London to pursue his career. In the 1950s he appeared on British television in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and made his film debut in 1956 in “Hill 24 Does Not Answer” with Haya Harayeet. In 1958 he and Sally Ann Howes took over from Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison on Broadway in “My Fair Lady”. He remained on in the U.S. and was featured in the 1965 film “Von Ryan’s Express” with Frank Sinatra, “Our Man Flint” with James Coburn and “Caprice” with Doris Day and fellow Irishman Richard Harris. In 1969 he had a popular television success with the series “The Ghost and Mrs Muir” with Hope Lange. In 1982 he was in another successful series “Knight Rider”. His last film was “Out to Sea” in 1997. Edward Mulhare died the same year at the age of 74.
His “Independent” obituary:
ing established himself in the late-Fifties as a Broadway star when he succeeded Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, he spent the last 40 years in the United States, where his prolific work on stage, screen and television made him a popular player and box-office attraction, particularly in touring productions. His early career included notable work in the theatres of Ireland and England, including West End appearances with Orson Welles and Gladys Cooper.
Mulhare was born in Cork in 1923. Educated at St Nessan’s School and North Monastery, he spent a few months reading medicine at the National University of Ireland before deciding to follow his passion for theatre, and at 19 he made his professional debut at the Cork Opera House playing in successive weeks Murdo in The First Mrs Fraser and Cassio in Othello. Joining the newly formed Dublin Theatre Guild, who were recruiting talent from all over Ireland, he played Bill Walker in Shaw’s Major Barbara, Horace Giddens in Hellman’s The Little Foxes and La Hire in Shaw’s St Joan.
He made his first appearance in England with an Ensa unit as Max De Winter in Rebecca. After sporadic employment with the Gate Theatre in Dublin and club theatres in London, in 1950 he was named leading man of the Liverpool Repertory Company, which had spawned Rex Harrison and Michael Redgrave. The following year he played Othello once more, this time as Lodovico to Orson Welles’ Moor at the St James’ Theatre, produced by Laurence Olivier. Though this by Kenneth Tynan, who described Welles as having “the courage of his restrictions”, it was generally well received.
In 1952 Mulhare was part of the John Gielgud season at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and with Gielgud he subsequently went to the Rhodes Festival at Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), in Richard II. In 1953 he made his film debut in Thorold Dickinson’s Israeli-made film Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer. In this potent drama of the fight for modern Israel, he was top-billed as one of four soldiers defending a hill outside Jerusalem in the 1948 war. The same year he had a featured role as Sidney Willis MP, in the West End production of The Night of the Ball with Gladys Cooper and Wendy Hiller.
A turning-point in his career came in 1957, when he was chosen to succeed Rex Harrison in the Broadway production of My Fair Lady. With his suave urbanity and clipped British accent, he proved a popular successor and played the role for three years, his Elizas including Julie Andrews, Sally Ann Howes and Anne Rogers. When Rex Harrison saw the show for the first time as a member of the audience, he found Mulhare “very good – I was enchanted with the whole performance”.
In 1960 he went with the show to Russia then decided to settle in the US, where he found steady employment on stage, screen and television. On Broadway he starred in The Devil’s Advocate (1961) and succeeded Michael Wilding in Jean Kerr’s hit comedy Mary, Mary (1961). Later he starred in a Los Angeles production of The Sound of Music, and with Anne Rogers, who had become one of his closest friends, he toured the US in the musical Camelot and play Death Trap as well as revivals of My Fair Lady. In the early Seventies he toured 159 American cities in a production of Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell with Myrna Loy, Ricardo Montalban and Kurt Kasznar. “Edward Mulhare made a superb Devil,” said Loy later. “He possessed all the charm and wit for the part.”
On screen he was one of the British prisoners-of-war, an army padre who impersonates a German officer during a daring escape in Von Ryan’s Express (1964), and he was an effectively smooth villain in two spoofs of James Bond movies, the hit Our Man Flint (1966) starring James Coburn, and the dire Caprice (1967) in which he was a duplicitous cosmetics tycoon, involved in a covert drugs operation, who recruits Doris Day as an industrial spy.
His prolific television work started in England with two episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1956). American series in which he appeared included Murder She Wrote, Streets of San Francisco, Outer Limits, Hart To Hart, Battlestar Galactica, and regular roles in two further series, both of which becane hits.
When the 1941 film The Ghost and Mrs Muir was converted to a television series in 1968, Mulhare again followed in Harrison’s footsteps as the ghost of an irascible sea captain who shares a Cornish cottage with an attractive widow (Hope Lange, in Gene Tierney’s original role). The show ran for two years and made Mulhare a household name.
He was to have an even bigger success in 1982 with Knight Rider, in which he was the dapper Devon Miles, mentor to an undercover policeman (David Hasselhoff), who has been killed but brought back to life and given a lavishly equipped car (which could leap 50 feet in the air – and talk) in which to defend the unfortunate and fight injustice. With particular appeal to young audiences, it was the first show on the NBC network to hold its own against Dallas on CBS, and ran for five years and 90 episodes.
Mulhare continued to act until diagnosed with cancer a few months ago, and has a role in the forthcoming Jack Lemmon / Walter Matthau film Out to Sea.
Tom Vallance
Edward Mulhare, actor: born Cork, Ireland 8 April 1923; died Los Angeles 24 May 1997.
His obituary in “The Independent” can also be accessed here.
Danny La Rue was born Daniel Carroll in Cork in 1927. When he was six, his family moved to London. He served in the British Royal Navy as a young man. He began performing in nightclubs in the late 1950’s and soon had built up a following for his a female impersonations. He was very popular in the 1960’s and had his own nightclub. In 1972 he starred in his only film “Our Miss Fred”. Danny La Rue died in 2009 at the age of 81.
His “Guardian” obituary:
Danny La Rue, who has died aged 81, flouted the usual showbusiness rule that, to be funny, every female impersonator needed to have an obvious suggestion of –hobnailed boots beneath a long frock. In a variation on this tradition, he appeared attired in sequinned dresses, but immediately said “wotcher, mates!” in a gruff voice. Yet what La Rue achieved was to replace a traditionally derisive mocking of women, that showed them as faintly grotesque, with glitter and elegance. He did it to such an extent that, apart from his height of over 6ft, he might easily have been a beautiful woman trying her luck with saucy jokes and sentimental songs. He became the first performer for many years to base his entire career on impersonating women.
“Vulgar, yes, but there is nothing crude about me,” was his guiding maxim, as he flounced around variety stages, clubs, pierheads and pantomimes, doing a dozen changes a show, sometimes with stylish but over-the-top dresses which cost £5,000 each. At his peak, in the 1970s, he was earning the equivalent of £2m a year, and had four homes, a Rolls-Royce and an entourage of 60. La Rue was never a gay icon, nor a butt of the feminist movement, which sometimes surprised him. His core audience was, in fact, blue-rinsed ladies of a certain age who sent gushing letters congratulating him on his awards: showbusiness personality of the year in 1969, theatre personality of the year in 1970, 25 years in show business award in 1976 and entertainer of the decade in 1979. They wrote saying how much they admired his legs or his self-manufactured rubber bosom, presumably because they identified with him and were comfortable with his act – though it sometimes included raucous jokes which, coming from anyone else, might have caused deep offence. He got away with it, he claimed, because everyone knew that everything he did and said was just a pretence: he regarded himself as an actor.
Although Paul Scofield tried to –persuade him to act in “legitimate” –theatre, and Laurence Olivier wanted him to play Lady Macbeth, La Rue did not risk trying to escape his limitations. He would explain that taking off –Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Bette Davis and Joan Collins, or Sophie Tucker singing My Yiddisher Mama, was acting enough. As a cabaret perfomer, he could be decidedly risqué, earning himself the nicknames Danny La Rude and Danny La Blue. Offstage, he could also be reckless and get away with it. Once, he was appearing at a London club and in a –Coventry pantomime simultaneously. At the same time, the royal family were asking for an increase in the civil list. When the Duke of Edinburgh, visiting La Rue’s show, asked him if he was doing it for the cash, La Rue replied that it seemed to be all the fashion. A Guardian critic said in the 1960s that La Rue’s material was “dirty night-club jokes for drunks and bored people and other actors, and yet it is truly cleansing and cathartic”. To which a reader from Hampstead – not usually regarded as the centre of La Rue’s core audience – inquired acidly whether the critic was “going through a period of severe mental strain”. The reader –obviously regarded La Rue’s material as neither filthy nor psychologically significant, just funny. This was the received opinion throughout a long career which, he said, was sustained by discipline and application.
Born Daniel Patrick Carroll in Cork, Ireland, La Rue was the youngest son of a Roman Catholic cabinet-maker, who had five children. La Rue never knew him. His father went to New York in the 1920s with the idea of bringing his family over later, but died before this could happen. Danny was then 18 months old. His mother, whom he described as his life’s inspiration, decided to compromise by seeking the family’s fortunes in England. She lived in Soho, central London, struggling on her widow’s pension and wages as a seamstress to provide for the large family, while young Danny attended schools in London and then, evacuated from London during the blitz, in Exeter. One day he found his mother in tears because she didn’t know where the money for his new school uniform was going to come from. On leaving school, he earned £1.50 a week in a –bakery; wartime rationing was in place and he was allowed to take cakes home as a perk. He got a job in Exeter as a window-dresser, then moved back to London, doing the same job for an Oxford Street store.
Called up for the Royal Navy, he made his first stage appearance, aged 18, as a native girl in a comic send-up of the serious play White Cargo. John Gielgud saw it in Singapore and told La Rue that he should take his ability to make people laugh more seriously. Once he left the navy, he did so. An old naval friend told him about auditions for an all-male chorus in the show Forces Showboat. Harry Secombe was in the same show.
Forces Showboat went on tour for months, but La Rue saw little point in dressing up as a woman in the –provinces. It didn’t seem to be getting him anywhere, so he returned to the Oxford Street store and initiated lunch-time fashion shows. Then the promoter Ted Gatty persuaded him to do a West End revue in drag. He would do it, said La Rue, as long as it were not under his real name. When he arrived for rehearsals he found that Gatty had already given him the name Danny La Rue. The producer Cecil Landau saw the show and got La Rue a two-week slot at Churchill’s club in Mayfair, which turned into a three-year engagement as top of the bill. La Rue spent the 1950s appearing on stage, often in –pantomimes staged by the impresario Tom Arnold. He also appeared in cabaret in clubs with such success that, in the early 1960s, he opened Danny’s, his own club in Hanover Square, which lasted nine years.
This was in contrast to a later business venture, in the 1970s: restoring the derelict stately home Walton Hall near Stratford-upon-Avon, which he had bought for £500,000 – much of his considerable savings. He poured the rest into restoration and turning it into a hotel and arts centre, only to find that the two Canadian managers were conmen who had left him with a pile of unpaid bills, for which La Rue was legally responsible. The day after his 56th birthday, La Rue’s company went into voluntary liquidation and he was forced to sell his home in Henley to pay off the debt. It got worse. In 1984 he took the lead in Hello, Dolly! which was critically panned and closed soon after. Later that year, his manager of 30 years, Jack Hanson, whom he described as “the love of my life”, died of a stroke. La Rue drank himself to sleep every night until a –psychic told him that his pet dog was the reincarnation of Hanson. Taking –further comfort from his Catholic religion – he kept a little shrine by his –bedside – La Rue resumed his disciplined routine of personal appearances at pierheads and in pantomime, rationing his television appearances as always. Why, he asked, should people pay to see him on stage when they could see him for free on TV?
He never married and was angry at those who called his announced, but later called-off, engagement to an American millionairess in 1987 a publicity stunt. In 2000, his companion Wayne King, an Australian pianist, died aged 46, of Aids. Two years later, in recognition of the thousands of pounds he raised for Aids charities, La Rue was appointed OBE (the Queen was said to be a great admirer of his act). Suffering from the eye condition macular degeneration, in 2006 he also suffered a stroke, though even then his agent said that La Rue was “dying to get his old frocks out, dust them off and get back in the limelight”. Shortly afterwards, in poor health and receiving financial assistance from an actors’ charity, he moved in to the home of his former dresser and longtime friend Annie Galbraith, who cared for him until his death.
• Danny La Rue (Daniel Patrick Carroll), female impersonator and actor, born 26 July 1927; died 31 May 2009
The above Dennis Barker obituary on Danny La Rue can also be accessed online here.
Bryan Marshall obituary in “The Guardian” in 2011.
The actor Bryan Marshall, who has died aged 81, was a solid character actor who brought integrity and realism to the parts he played on screen in Britain throughout the 1960s and 70s. Many will remember him best for his pivotal role as the duplicitous Councillor Harris in the classic film The Long Good Friday (1979), which made a massive impact at the box office with its brutal tale of a London gangland boss, Harold Shand, played by Bob Hoskins, seeing his empire being threatened by rivals from the IRA.
The drama, written by Barrie Keeffe and directed by John Mackenzie, brilliantly captures the dreary London of the 70s as it approaches a new decade of aspiration and docklands regeneration. Shand sees the development opportunities and Harris is on his payroll. For much of the film, Marshall is a silent presence, but that changes when his character gets drunk at a dinner with potential American mafia investors.
Describing himself as a self-made man who rose from the gutter, he tries to sell the idea of developing “a magnificent, high in the sky hotel, something to be proud of”, but is too loud for their liking. When it emerges that he had a hand in the IRA’s attempt to take Shand’s empire, Harris ends up being shot and killed.
Earlier, Marshall had put himself on the radar of James Bond fans when he was seen in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) as Commander Talbot, captain of a British nuclear submarine captured by a supertanker. It brought another grisly end for the actor when Talbot was killed by a grenade while storming the ship’s control room after Roger Moore’s 007 freed him and his crew.
Marshall’s talent was largely lost to British film and TV producers and directors after he moved to Australia in 1983, although he made a few returns to his homeland and was seen in Australian soaps broadcast in Britain.Advertisement
He was born in Battersea, south London, and on leaving the local Salesian college went through jobs in an insurance office and as a sales rep while acting with amateur companies. His ambition to act full-time was realised after he trained at Rada (1961-63). He found work in repertory theatres before coming to the attention of a nationwide audience during a six-month run as the fictional Brentwich United’s awkward club captain Jack Birkett in the BBC football soap United!, from its first episode in 1965 until 1966.
Marshall returned to soap in 1971 with a one-off role in Coronation Street as Trevor Parkin, who attended a horticultural lecture given by Albert Tatlock and upstaged the host by showing greater knowledge of the subject. In between, on television he played Captain Dobbin in Vanity Fair (1967), Detective Sergeant Peach in Spindoe (1968), Gilbert Markham in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1968), Dr John Graham Bretton in Villette (1970) and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion (1971).
He showed that he could carry a drama himself when he starred in two 1972 Play for Today productions – as the striking Cornish clay miner Manuel Stocker in Stocker’s Copper and Bill Huntley in Better Than the Movies – as well as Commander Alan Glenn in the third series (1976) of Warship, the property developer Ray Campion in the thriller serial The Mourning Brooch (1979) and the air freight business’s chief pilot Tony Blair (before the future prime minister found fame) in Buccaneer (1980). He was back in soap as Clive Lawson for the first two runs (1974-75) of the afternoon serial Rooms, in which he and Sylvia Kay played the owners renting out bedsits in their London house.
Another pivotal role for Marshall came in the film Quatermass and the Pit (1967), a big-screen remake of the writer Nigel Kneale’s third sci-fi serial for TV about a scientist confronting alien forces. He played Potter, a bomb squad captain identifying an unexploded device unearthed during an archaeological dig as a German V-missile. It was his fourth appearance in a Hammer Films production. Earlier he was the Russian villager Vasily in Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966), played Tom in The Witches (1966) and was Dominic in The Viking Queen (1967).
After moving to Australia in 1983, Marshall remained a prolific screen actor. Among many appearances in television dramas, he starred in Golden Pennies (1985) as a pioneering Englishman seeking his fortune in an 1850s gold-rush mining area, and played Duncan Stewart, Australian ambassador to a fictional south-east Asian country, in the first two series of Embassy (1990-91).
His soap roles included Piet Koonig in A Country Practice (1983), Dr Jonathan Edmonds in Prisoner (retitled Prisoner: Cell Block H in Britain, 1984), Gerard Singer in Neighbours (1987) and Ron Hawkins in The Flying Doctors (1988), and he took two parts in Home and Away – John Simpson (1998) and Trevor Bardwell (2003). In 1989 Marshall hosted the first series of Australia’s Most Wanted, featuring real-life unsolved crimes.
There were occasional returns to Britain for roles that included DSI Don Roberts in two 1997 episodes of Thief Takers and a vet with a drink problem in Heartbeat in 1998.
Marshall is survived by his wife, Vicki, and their three sons, Sean, Paul and Joshua.
• Bryan Marshall, actor, born 19 May 1938; died 25 June 2019Topics
2519488 Mac Coy aux poings d\’or: KILLER McCOY, US poster, from left: Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney, Ann Blyth, 1947; (add.info.: Affiche du film Mac Coy aux poings d\’or (KILLER McCOY) de Roy Rowland avec Brian Donlevy, Mickey Rooney, Ann Blyth, 1947 ); Everett Collection.2447171 Behind Prison Gates: BEHIND PRISON GATES, standing l-r: Jacqueline Wells, Brian Donlevy, Richard Fiske on poster art, 1939; (add.info.: Affiche du film BEHIND PRISON GATES de Charles Barton avec standing l-r: Jacqueline Wells, Brian Donlevy, Richard Fiske on poster art, 1939); Everett Collection.EVT5783509 STAND BY FOR ACTION, US poster, Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton, Marilyn Maxwell, Brian Donlevy, 1942; (add.info.: STAND BY FOR ACTION, US poster, Robert Taylor, Charles Laughton, Marilyn Maxwell, Brian Donlevy, 1942); Everett Collection.
Brian Donlevy was born in 1901 in Northern Ireland. His parents moved to the U.S. when he was an infant. His breaththrough film role came in 1935 when he was cast with Edward G. Robinson in “Barbary Coast”. He went on to star in “Beau Geste”, “The Great McGinty”, “An American Romance” and “The Miracle of Morgans Creek”. He died in 1972 at the age of 71.
IMDB entry:
It seems that Brian Donlevy started out life as colorfully as any character he ever played on the stage or screen. He lied about his age (he was actually 14) in 1916 so he could join the army. When Gen. John J. Pershing sent American troops to invade Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa–Mexican rebels under Villa’s command raided Columbus, NM, and killed 16 American soldiers and civilians–Donlevy served with that expedition and later, in WW I, was a pilot with the Lafayette Escadrille, a unit of the French Air Force comprised of American and Canadian pilots. His schooling was in Cleveland, OH, but in addition he spent two years at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, MD. However, he gave up on a military career for the stage. After having landed several smaller roles, he got a part in “What Price Glory” and established himself as a bona fide actor. Later such roles on stage as “Three for One”, “The Milky Way” and “Life Begins at 8:30” gave him the experience to head off to Hollywood. Donlevy began his Hollywood career with the silent film A Man of Quality (1926) and his first talkie was Gentlemen of the Press (1929) (in which he had a bit part). There was a five- to six-year gap before he reappeared on the film scene in 1935 with three pictures: Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), Another Face(1935) and Barbary Coast (1935), which was his springboard into film history. Receiving rave reviews as “the tough guy all in black”, acting jobs finally began to roll his way. In 1936 he starred in seven films, including Strike Me Pink (1936), in which he played the tough guy to Eddie Cantor‘s sweet bumpkin Eddie Pink. In all, from 1926 to 1969 Donlevy starred in at least 89 films, reprising one of his Broadway roles as a prizefighter in The Milky Way (1940), and had his own television series (which he also produced), Dangerous Assignment (1952). In 1939 he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the sadistic Sgt. Markoff in Paramount’s Beau Geste (1939), its remake of an earlier silent hit. The Great McGinty (1940), a Preston Sturges comedy about a poor homeless slob who makes it to Governor of a state with the mob’s help, is a brilliant character study of a man and the changes he goes through to please himself, those around him and, eventually, the woman he loves. A line in the film, spoken by Mrs. McGinty, seems a fitting description of the majority of roles Brian Donlevy would play throughout his career: “. . . You’re a tough guy, McGinty, not a wrong guy.” Donlevy’s ability to make the roughest edge of any character have a soft side was his calling card. He perfected it and no one has quite mastered it since. He later, in 1944, reprised that role in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944). By 1935 Donlevy was working for 20th Century-Fox and had just completed filming 36 Hours to Kill (1936) when he became engaged to young singer Marjorie Lane, and they married the next year. The marriage produced one child, Judy, but ended in divorce in 1947. It was 19 years before he remarried. In 1966, Bela Lugosi‘s ex-wife Lillian became Mrs. Brian Donlevy, and they were married until his death in 1972. Donlevy had always derived great pleasure from his two diverse interests, gold mining and writing poetry, so it was fitting that after his last film, Pit Stop (1969), he retired to Palm Springs, CA, where he began to write short stories and had his income well supplemented from a prosperous California tungsten mine he owned. Having gone in for throat surgery in 1971 he re-entered the Motion Picture County Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, on March 10th, 1972. Less than a month later, on April 6, he passed away from cancer.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jane Byron Dean <McGinty@aol.com>
The above IMDB entry cn also be accessed online her
Kathie McGrath was born in Dublin in 1983. She graduated in History from Dublin’s Trinity College. In 2007 she appeared in the film “Damage” and then in “Eden”. She had a role in “The Tudors”. Is currently on television in “The Adventures of Merlin”. “Independent.ie” article on Kathie McGrath here.
Richard Todd, who has died of cancer aged 90, will be best remembered for the films in which he played a wide assortment of clean-cut British heroes. His most famous performance was as Wing Commander Guy Gibson in The Dam Busters (1955), although he also played Robin Hood and Sir Walter Raleigh.
As dour and stiff upper-lipped as any of the characters he portrayed in his highly successful film career in the 1940s and 1950s, he was one of the first members of the Parachute Regiment to jump on D-day – a real-life role he later echoed, albeit at a higher rank, in The Longest Day (1962), the reconstruction of the invasion of Normandy 17 years after the event (another actor posed as Todd himself).
As Gibson, Todd starred as the leader of the daring airborne mission in May 1943 to smash German industry in the Ruhr valley by strategic bombing of its dams, causing massive flooding. The movie retold the story of Barnes Wallis’s invention of a bouncing bomb that skimmed the surface of the reservoirs before colliding with the three targets – two of which were destroyed.Advertisement
Born in Dublin, Todd was the son of an army major of Scots and Irish descent. His early life in England was one of private schools, including Shrewsbury, genteel poverty and family squabbles, usually over his father’s drinking and extravagances that included buying a large Chrysler roadster behind his wife’s back.
Through two divorces, Todd himself displayed a love of large cars, large houses and large domestic staffs, which only his earlier career as a film star – one of the busiest faces in British cinema – could comfortably support.7
After the Italia Conti school of acting in London, where a teacher advised him to “bring it up from the genitals, dear!” – advice beyond his dramatic range – Todd first appeared with the Welsh Players, a precarious touring group, then with Dundee Rep. Just before the second world war, he appeared at the Regents Park open air theatre, then got a part in a mediocre film, For Them That Trespass (1949), and a seven-year contract with the Associated British Film Corporation (ABFC), then the main rival to Rank.
His tear-jerking portrayal of a dying and bitter Scots corporal in his second contract film, The Hasty Heart (1949), made him an instant hot property. Ronald Reagan was in a supporting role, his only appearance in a film made in Britain. The two men stayed in touch and once dined together at 10 Downing Street with a woman they both admired, Margaret Thatcher. Hitchcock used him in Stage Fright (1950), Walt Disney used him in Robin Hood (1952). But Todd was always uneasy in Hollywood. Once, in his enthusiasm for tennis and ignorance of local idiom, he told a startled Ruth Roman that he would love a knock up with her, and on another occasion he arrived for work in a car with a flat battery that his distinguished director King Vidor had to help push-start.
Todd nevertheless appeared as Raleigh, alongside Bette Davis, in The Virgin Queen in 1955, made The Sword and the Rose (1953) for Disney and Saint Joan (1957) for Otto Preminger. He certainly made ABFC more money than his salary by being hired out to other film-makers. But he was happiest while filming in England, although he refused the lead in The Guns of Navarone (1961) and was also unable to accept the role of James Bond – despite being Ian Fleming’s first choice – because of other commitments. Sean Connery took the role instead.
By the end of the 1950s, the studio system was breaking up, his contract was not renewed, and wheeler-dealing over individual films became the norm. While flirting with television, for which he did Carrington VC in 1960, he became a stage actor-manager by forming Triumph theatre productions and touring middlebrow plays. Under the Triumph umbrella, he appeared in Royal Shakespeare Company productions, including The Hollow Crown. He also played the lead for eight unbroken years from 1981 in Richard Harris’s The Business of Murder in the West End. His denigration of his own business sense and his squire’s tweeds and eyeglass were partly a pose.
He became a dairy farmer from 1957, leading to his appointment as president of the Henley and District Agricultural Association in Buckinghamshire. A very British perfectionist, he confessed to a dream that, despite the warnings of his friends and everyone else he talked to, there would always be a market for the best. So he bought the very best Jersey cows, the best hens and the best pigs – and ran straight into trouble. Todd claimed that this came about because the Milk Marketing Board tended to help mediocre produce at the expense of the best. In those days most dairy farmers found it expedient to market their produce through the board, but he decided to go it alone.
“I saw to it that my Wensleydale cheese came from Wensleydale, my Gloucester from Gloucester,” he said. He hawked it, along with the cream, around restaurants, little shops and supermarkets across the Midlands and southern England. As a result, Richard Todd cream was praised by the Consumer Association magazine Which? and by many gourmet publications.
His success as a businessman/farmer was a double-edged sword as his acting career receded. However, Todd retained his instinct for business. In the 1970s, actors – especially well-spoken and well-dressed middle-class actors who had slipped out of fashion – were having a lean time. An organisation was set up to use such players by touring them in the US and other parts of the world. Todd – the star of 50 films over 20 years – was one of the relatively few former high-powered stars who turned out to support the idea.
Physically small but sturdy, Todd was more of a realist than many actors. He said bluntly that when the film parts dried up and he had returned to the stage, he had been “absolutely dreadful” in a production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1965) and had had to relearn the stage technique he had acquired at the beginning of his career. At that time, too, he sold his farm to support himself.
He was married twice, in 1949 to Catherine Grant-Bogle, by whom he had a son and daughter, and in 1970 to Virginia Mailer, by whom he had two sons. Both marriages ended in divorce. His son from his first marriage and one of his sons from his second marriage killed themselves. He is survived by his other two children.
• Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd, actor, born 11 June 1919; died 3 December 2009
Anna Charleston was born in Melbourne, Australia. She began her television career in Australian television in the series “Consider Your Verdict” in 1962. Her other series include 2Class of 74″, “Neighbours” and in the UK, “Emmerdale Farm”. While not not working, Ms Charleson resides in her home in the West of Ireland.
Interview with Anne Charleston in “The Mayo News”:
Australian star smitten with life in the west
Ciara Galvin talks to ex-Neighbours star Anne Charleston ahead of her performance in Steel Magnolias in Castlebar
It’s not often you get to chat with Australian soap royalty. But when the actor in question lives on the Galway/Mayo border, it makes for what feels like a relaxed catch-up. Anne Charleston played the iconic role of Madge Bishop in Neighbours. The Melbourne-born actress relocated to the west of Ireland in 1992, and is currently on tour with a theatre production of ‘Steel Magnolias’, which is due to be staged in Castlebar this Thursday and Friday, October 18 and 19. The play tells the story of six women’s enduring bond of friendship despite their age and class differences. Set in the American deep south, it is a tale of love, loss and the women’s sudden realisation of their own mortality. Anne plays the grumpy and eccentric Ouiser Boudreaux, sharing the stage with another well-known actress Mischa Barton, who starred in the film Sixth Sense and US hit series The OC. Barton plays another central character, Shelby Eatenton. In her gravelly Aussie drawl, Anne describes Steel Magnolias as a ‘fabulous and lovely play’, revealing that from the start, she and her fellow cast members ‘worked like a charm’ on stage. Having starred in the theatre hit Calendar Girls, it comes as no surprise that Anne is at ease in an all-female production. The straight-talking Melbournian dispels any notion that women are harder to work with. “You’re either a good actor or you’re not,” she confided. So, does she identify with Ouiser, who (a little like Madge in the early days) has quite a fiery temperament? Perhaps a little. “You always have to associate with your character on some level, I don’t think I’m quite as bad as Ouiser, but you know, we all have our moments don’t we,” she quipped. Irish home Anne Charleston lives in a cottage in a quiet area between Shrule and Headford – a far cry from the bright lights of Melbourne, which was named ‘the world’s most liveable city’ by The Economist this year. A far cry it might be, but the bond with her adopted country is strong. “This is my home,” she said, warmly. Charleston credits her Irish grandparents with playing a part in her relocation to Ireland. She also grew up in ‘a very Irish community’. “I was brought up on stories of the place.” When she eventually came to Ireland, she was smitten – with the west especially. “When I saw the west of Ireland I kind of came under its spell. It’s very beautiful. I came across to shop, basically. I looked at properties in Clare and Galway, and the interesting properties appeared to be in Galway.” Totally at ease in her countryside hideaway, Anne spends her days walking, tending to her garden, reading (‘a lot’) and sometimes having friends over for drinks. She makes frequent trips back to Australia, however, and plans to visit Melbourne soon after the Steel Magnolias tour finishes up.
Minding Madge Anne played Madge Bishop in Neighbours from 1986 to 1992, when she left to move to Ireland. She reprised the role again in 1996, but left Ramsay Street permanently in 2000. Talking candidly about her fame as Madge, Anne said it was a ‘double-edged sword’. “It did open a lot of doors for me, but there is also this slight snobbery that I’m regarded as a soap actress, and that’s not entirely true.” Anne’s career took flight in the ’70s and was well established before she ever began in Neighbours. Her acting CV includes a wide variety of roles from drama to theatre. When asked how she got into acting, Charelston quickly replied, “I can’t remember when I wanted to do anything else.” On her reasons for leaving Neighbours after her return to the series, Anne explained she was unhappy with the direction Madge’s once-feisty character was being taken in by the soap’s writers. “I didn’t like the way they wrote the character, and we couldn’t come to an agreement. It became a real pain. They wrote her in such a way that I think they decided that because I was over 50, I had to be a victim … I was sick of playing that kind of character because it was not the kind of character that I had built up.” In a comment that could just as easily have been made by the quick-tongued Ouiser, Anne laughed and said she was ‘happy enough to go’, adding ‘I think they [the writers] were sick of me as well!’. Looking to the future, she is noncommittal as to whether she’ll return to TV work, stay in theatre or opt for film. “I like to work.” she said simply, “if the role’s good, I’m there.”
Steel Magnolias has been touring the country since September 11 and will be staged at the Royal Theatre, Castlebar this Thursday and Friday, October 18 and 19. Tickets (€25.65 each) are available from the threatre box office on 0818 300 000.
This “Mayo News” article can also be accessed online here.
Anjelica Huston was born in 1951 in Santa Monica, California. Her grandfather was the wonderful actor Walter Huston who won an Academy Award for his performance in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in 1948. Her father was the faamous film director Walter Huston. She was brought up in Galway in the West of Ireland. In her teens she moved with her mothert to London. Her father cast her when she was seventeen in the film “A Walk with Love and Death”. It is neither a critical or box office success and she turned to modelling as a career. In 1981 she had a part in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” with her then partner Jack Nicholson. In 1985 she won an Academy Award for her performance in “Prizzi’s Honor” which was directed by her father. Since then she has given many wonderful performances including “The Grifters” with John Cusack and Annette Bening and “The Royal Tenebaums” . I think her best performace was as Greta Conroy in “The Dead” which was the last film directed by her father and based on the wonderful James Joyce short story. John Cusack was born in 1966 in Evanston, Illnois to an Irish Catholic family. His sister is the actress Joan Cusack. His film credits include “Grosse Point Blank”, “The Sure Thing”, “Sixteen Candles” and “High Fidelity”. Annette Bening was born in 1958 in Topeka, Kanas. Her major film breakthrough came in 1989 for her performance in “Valmont” with Colin Firth. Her other films include “Julia”, “American Beauty” and “The Kids Are Alright”. She is married to the actor Warren Beatty by whom she has four children.
Colm Meaney was born in Dublin in 1953. He appeared on Irish television in dramra at RTE when he was a teenager. He made his British television debut in 1978 in “Z Cars”. In 1987 in Hollywood he starred in the cult favourite TV series “Star Trek”. Among his films are John Huston’s “The Dead”. “”Die Hard 2”, “The Commitments”, “Snapper”, “Under Siege” and “This Is My Father”.
TCM Overview:
Curly-haired Irish player Colm Meaney, perhaps best known to American audiences as Chief Engineer Miles O’Brien on the hit syndicated series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, has had a long and varied career in features, as both a scene-stealing supporting player and a charismatic lead. Determined to be an actor since age 13, Meaney spent some time in a fisherman training program after leaving high school, but soon began his career at the renowned Abbey Theatre, first as an student in its training program and later on the Dublin stage before moving to Great Britain where he joined 7:84, a leftist theater group. He traveled to the USA in 1982, settling in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, and jetted back-and-forth between the New York and London stages. After four years of continent-hopping, Meaney and his then-wife actress Bairbre Dowling moved to Los Angeles, where he soon made his feature debut in the action thriller “Omega 7/Omega Syndrome” (1986). The following year would bring him back to Ireland for a role in “The Dead”, John Huston’s final film, an adaptation of James Joyce’s short story. Meaney was initially cast in a recurring role of Engineer Miles O’Brien in the syndicated “Star Trek” spin-off “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (from 1987 to 1992), and was later upgraded to regular as Chief Engineer O’Brien, the most accessible and human character, on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (syndicated, 1993-99). While Meaney worked extensively in television during this time, even taking a supporting part in the 1994 CBS miniseries “Scarlett” in addition to his series role, his film career didn’t slow down.
Meaney began his frequent work with Alan Parker on the World War II-era romance “Come See the Paradise” (1990). That same year, he was also featured in the cartoonish “Dick Tracy” and the action sequel “Die Hard 2: Die Harder”. Meaney reteamed with Parker for “The Commitments” (1991), stealing scenes as the Elvis-worshipping father of the manager of a burgeoning soul band on Dublin’s northside, in the first installment of novelist Roddy Doyle’s acclaimed Barrytown trilogy. The following year Meaney co-starred in the turn-of-the-century tale of Irish immigrants settling America’s west in “Far and Away” and had the featured role of Major Ambrose in Michael Mann’s epic “The Last of the Mohicans”. His next three films, however, were lensed in his native Ireland: “Into the West” (1992), “The Snapper” (1993) and “The War of the Buttons” (1994). While the latter was notable for pairing Meaney onscreen with his then-wife, it was “The Snapper”, Stephen Frears’ adaptation of the second novel in Roddy Doyle’s trilogy that would provide a more memorable turn, as well as marking the actor’s debut starring role–as Dessie Curley, a loud-mouthed blue collar man who proves a sensitive and caring father when faced with the unplanned pregnancy of his young unwed daughter. Physically imposing with a manner at once brusque and comically weary, Meaney turned in a masterful performance, making Dessie a sympathetic and delightful character.
A third teaming with Alan Parker as a rabid proponent of vegetarianism in 1994’s “The Road to Wellville” was followed by turn as Morgan the Goat, a proud and crafty innkeeper who endeavors to protect the status of his Welsh village’s beloved mountain, which English map surveyors designate as a hill in “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain”. In 1996, after portraying a smarmy politician in the romance “Last of the High Kings” (released on video in the USA in 1998 as “Summer Fling”), Meaney took on the last installment of Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy, reteaming with Frears for “The Van”, joining Donal O’Kelly as unemployed men who go into business, selling fish and chips out of the titular vehicle. With a similar character to his previous Doyle efforts (the books followed the same characters throughout, but names were changed for the film versions), Meaney turned in another inspired and endearing performance In 1997, the actor conquered the big budget action genre with a role as a flashy and reactionary DEA agent who must be convinced by John Cusack’s US Marshal Vince Larkin to not shoot down a hijacked aircraft full of dangerous prisoners and one parolee in “Con Air”. Remaining in demand in 1998, he was featured in Ted Demme’s crime drama “Monument Ave”, starring Denis Leary and offered a delightful cameo as a fey bed and breakfast owner whose mother helps to solve a man’s mysterious origins in Paul Quinn’s “This is My Father” (released in the USA in 1999). Rounding out the year, Meaney starred as the menacing pimp Cain in “Claire Dolan”, the story of a call girl (Katrin Cartlidge) who endeavors to start a new life with taxi driver Elton (Vincent D’Onofrio) and co-starred in the odd thriller “October 22”, the charming children’s film “Owd Bob” and the gangster drama “VIG” (which premiered on Cinemax).
In 1999, following the end of the seven-year run of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, Meaney returned to his theatrical roots, appearing Off-Broadway in “The Cider House Rules–Part One: Here in St Cloud’s” as an ether-sniffing obstetrician. This marked his first New York engagement since his Broadway appearance in a small role in 1988’s “Breaking the Code” starring Derek Jacobi. Meaney has not forsaken film roles, however, having accepted supporting parts in the David E Kelley-scripted “Mystery, Alaska”, a look at a shrouded small town with a local hockey team that takes on the NHL’s New York Rangers and in thriller “The Criminal” (lensed 1999), starring Steven Mackintosh. He also starred as the Head Leprechaun opposite Grand Banshee Whoopi Goldberg in the NBC fantasy miniseries “Leprechauns” (scheduled to air in November 1999).
This TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
“Valerie Hobson was- to her disadvantage- ineffably ladylike. The British film industry of the 30s and 40s was a man’s world and the female stars got short shrift. Those British stars who did go to Hollywood were criticized back home for resubmitting to that town’s despised glamour treatment. Hobson’s time in Hollywood was not at all worthwhile, and she might have made no stronger mark in the British industry had not she managed to assert her distinctive personality from time to time. ” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars” (1970)
Valerie Hobson obituary in “The Guardian” in 1998.
Valerie Hobson has two distinct phases to her acting career. She was born in 1917 in Larne in Northern Ireland. She started her career in British films but by 1935 when she was only 18 she was acting in Hollywood. She starred in two classic Universal horror movies “”The Werewolf of London” and the magnificent James Whale directed “The Bride of Frankenstein” with Boris Karloff and Colin Clive. By the late thirties she was back in Britain and and continued her career there. Her second period of fame was with a series of films she made from the mid 1940’s onwards in the U.K. including David Lean’s “Great Expectations”, “KInd Hearts and Coronets”, “The Years Between” and “The Card”. In 1954 after a period playing Mrs Anna in the West End production of “The KIng and I”, Valerie Hobson retired from acting. Her name came into the headlines nine years later when her husband MP, John Profumo got involved in a scandal with Russian diplomats and Christine Keeler. Valerie Hobson and John Profumo remained together and weathered the storm and spent their remaing years involved in many charitable causes especially in the East End of London. She died in 1998 at the age of 81. Her son David has written a terrific book about his remarkable parents entitled “Bringing the House Down” which was published in 2006.
“Independent” obituary by Tom Vallance:LIKE MANY British female film stars of the Thirties and Forties, Valerie Hobson exuded breeding and class, but she also brought to her performances a delightfully sophisticated sense of humour and a refreshing element of spunk, whether as the wise-cracking heroine of Q Planes, the resourceful double agent of The Spy in Black, the haughty Estella of Great Expectations, the shrewd widow in Kind Hearts and Coronets, or, on stage, the dignified but determined governess Anna Leonowens in The King and I.
She was to display similar grit in her real life when her husband, the politician John Profumo, became notorious for his relationship with a call-girl who was also involved with a Russian official. In an admirable display of stoicism and loyalty, Hobson stood by her husband and they were to remain married until her death.
She was born Valerie Babette Louise Hobson, in Larne, Northern Ireland, in 1917, the daughter of a British naval officer who was serving on a minesweeper at the time. She was educated at St Augustine’s Priory, London and started dancing lessons at three:
When we moved to Hampshire and I was five, I was taken to London twice a week to be taught ballet by Espinosa. These lessons were intended to “give me grace”, but were precious training for the stage, which I’d been heading for ever since I grabbed a bath towel and pretended to be the Queen of Sheba, with nanny for an audience.
After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she made her stage debut at the age of 15 in Orders Are Orders. Oscar Hammerstein II, who saw her in the show, spotted her lunching with her mother at Claridge’s, went over to their table and offered her a small part in his production Ball at the Savoy, starring Maurice Evans, at Drury Lane. While appearing in the show, she made her first film, a minor thriller Eyes of Fate (1933).
Evans then asked her to appear with himself and Henry Daniell in the film version of L. DuGardo Peach’s radio play The Path of Glory (1934), a satire on war so biting that it was taken out of distribution after one day. Hobson had a small stage role in Noel Coward’s Conversation Piece, during the run of which she played the romantic lead in a popular screen adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s play Badger’s Green. As the daughter of a developer whose plans will wreck a village’s beloved cricket green, she complicates things by falling in love with the son of a protestor.
Her performance in the film led to tests for Hollywood and the offer of a contract by Universal Pictures. With her mother, the 17-year-old Hobson departed for the US, but was disappointed with the parts she was given. Ironically her first role, that of Biddy in the studio’s version of Dickens’ Great Expectations (1934) was eliminated from the final print – years later Hobson was to have notable success as Estella in David Lean’s masterly version of the same tale.
The studio started her in B films (briefly as a platinum blonde), and though one of Hobson’s subsequent American films is a true classic, James Whale’s baroque Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the actress was unhappy with the other horror films and minor thrillers she was offered. Even in the best, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935) and Werewolf of London (1935), her roles were colourless. “I’d been there 18 months and learnt a great deal, but I was getting tired of horror pictures and doing nothing but scream and faint . . . In The Bride of Frankenstein, I was
carried by Boris Karloff over almost every artificial hill in Hollywood.” Universal in fact kept her screams in their sound library to use in subsequent horror movies.
Hobson returned to England in 1936, where in such films as the intriguing thriller No Escape (1936) she quickly established herself as a stylish leading lady. In this pre-war period Hobson reputedly also made more television appearances than any other actress. The producer Alexander Korda, after seeing Hobson’s performance opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr in Raoul Walsh’s Jump For Glory (1937), tested her for the role of a colonel’s wife on the North West Frontier in his production The Drum (1938).
Her next film, the comedy-thriller This Man Is News (1938), was the first to display Hobson’s innate flair for comedy and was favourably compared by critics to America’s “Thin Man” films, with Hobson and Barry K. Barnes as a pair of wise-cracking, cocktail-drinking married sleuths. “It had an extraordinary success,” Hobson told Brian McFarlane a few years ago. “As a nation we hadn’t made a high comedy successfully until then. When they put it on at the Plaza there were queues literally round the block to see it.”
A sequel, This Man in Paris (1939), was even better than the first. Both films were produced by Anthony Havelock-Allan, with whom Hobson fell in love, and they were married in 1939. Meanwhile the Korda production Q Planes (1938) had consolidated Hobson’s stardom. As the sister of Ralph Richardson and sweetheart of Laurence Olivier, Hobson brought infectious sparkle to a lively and witty espionage thriller, and she followed this with two more highly entertaining thrillers, The Spy in Black (1939) and Contraband (1940), both co- starring Conrad Veidt, scripted by Emeric Pressburger and directed by Michael Powell, who was to recall, “Valerie was a tall, strong, intelligent girl with glorious eyes and a quick wit (too quick a wit, some people thought, but I had suffered too many English ladies to complain about that).”
The Spy in Black opened in London the week that war was declared, was a great hit in both England and the US, and prompted the second pairing of the two stars in Contraband, aptly retitled Blackout in the US since a great deal of the film’s action takes place in a blacked-out West End. During the war years Hobson’s career faltered after she turned down David O Selznick’s offer of a Hollywood contract because she did not want to leave her husband.
She was off screen for three years after The Adventures of Tartu in 1943, and other actresses became more popular, notably those of the Gainsborough pictures, such as Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, Jean Kent and Patricia Roc, all of whom could play earthier roles than Hobson, who was becoming increasingly patrician.
She returned to the screen as an MP who finds it difficult to adjust to life with a husband returned from the war in The Years Between (1946), then was cast as Estella in Great Expectations (1946), regarded by many as the finest screen adaptation of a Dickens novel. The film was produced by Cineguild, a company formed by Hobson’s husband along with Ronald Neame and David Lean, and the same group produced Hobson’s next film, a lavish costume melodrama Blanche Fury (1947).
In this gloomy tale, Stewart Granger was the illegitimate but rightful heir to the Fury estate who murders Hobson’s husband and father-in-law. He is hanged for his crimes and Hobson dies giving birth to his son. An attempt to appeal to the audience who had flocked to Gainsborough melodramas, it was too sombre for popular acceptance. Said Hobson, “I had just had our son, who was born mentally handicapped, and Tony meant the film as a sort of `loving gift’, making me back into a leading lady.”
The film’s beautiful production values and stunning colour photography prompted critic Richard Winnington to comment: “Let’s have some bad lighting and some bad photograph and perhaps a bit of a good movie.” More highly thought of today, the film remains Hobson’s own favourite.
In 1949 she starred in a film unanimously praised as a classic comedy, Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets. Hobson stated:
I have always thought that the main reason for the success of Kind Hearts was that it was played absolutely dead straight. I think they were very clever and cast two such contrasting types as Joan Greenwood and myself as the women.
Hobson had an unsympathetic role as a selfish mother in The Rocking Horse Winner (1948) and played the Countess in The Card (1951), again co-starring with Alec Guinness (“a wonderful film actor with the most subtle integrity”). In 1952 she and Havelock-Allan were divorced.
Good film roles were becoming scarce again when Hobson was offered the starring role of Anna in the Drury Lane production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The Kind and I. The show’s original Broadway star, Gertrude Lawrence, had planned to recreate her part in London prior to her untimely death. (Hobson had studied singing at RADA, and during her Hollywood stay had sung on Bing Crosby’s radio programme.)
With Herbert Lom playing the King the show was a smash hit and a great personal success for Hobson. It opened in October 1953 and Hobson stayed in it for a year and a half, announcing that at the end of the run she would retire since she doubted anything in her career could top this. Her last film was Rene Clement’s witty comedy, Knave of Hearts (Monsieur Ripois) (1954) in which she was the accommodating wife of a philanderer (Gerard Philipe). She had married an MP, John Profumo, and stated that she would devote the rest of her life to being his wife.
When in March 1963 her husband admitted his affair with Christine Keeler and resigned from his post as Secretary of State for War, Hobson’s name was again in the headlines. “Of course I am not leaving Jack because this ghastly thing has happened,” she said at the time. “I hope to spend the rest of my life with him and my family – the rest of my life.” She continued to deal with the matter with restraint and dignity but did not flinch from the facts.
A few weeks after the headlines dozens of reporters and photographers rushed to Dymchurch in Kent where Hobson was making her first public appearance since the scandal, opening a home for mentally handicapped children. Before the ceremony, she told the crowd of over 1,000 people:
I hope you will forgive me if I start on a more private note. The personal affairs of my family have been so greatly in the limelight recently that it has not been quite easy for me to decide whether or not I should have fulfilled this engagement. The invitation which I accepted with great joy last October, has turned out to be a little of an ordeal. But when I see you all and know how friendly and kind you always are I know that, in fact, it is one of my great joys. There are occasions when all personal circumstances come secondary.
At the end of the ceremony the actress received a prolonged ovation. Her involvement with the mentally handicapped started after one of her two sons by Havelock-Allan was born with Downs Syndrome and she also devoted time to Lepra, a leprosy relief organisation. John Profumo, after his resignation, worked tirelessly for charity, notably at Toynbee Hall, a welfare organisation for the poor and victims of alcohol and drugs, and his wife assisted him in this. In 1975 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire and Hobson, who accompanied him to Buckingham Palace, made evident her great pleasure that her husband’s public service had been recognised.
Tom Vallance
Valerie Babette Louise Hobson, actress: born Larne, Co Down 14 April 1917; married 1939 Anthony Havelock-Allan (one son and one son deceased; marriage dissolved 1952), 1954 John Profumo (one son); died London 13 November 1998.
This “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER, from top: Valerie Hobson, John Howard Davies, John Mills, Ronald Squire on insert poster, 1950DRUMS, (aka THE DRUM), British poster art, from left: Raymond Massey, Valerie Hobson, Roger Livesey, Sabu, 1938Contraband, poster, (aka BLACKOUT), Valerie Hobson, Conrad Veidt, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Chinatown Squad, poster, Valerie Hobson (center), Lyle Talbot (right), 1935. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Valerie Hobson (1917-1998), British film actress, on a Blend-Rite hair grips card.
circa 1940s
TCM Overview:
Upper-crust beauty who established herself on the British stage and made her film debut in “Moulin Rouge” (1952). Bennett appeared in several plays written by her then-husband John Osborne, including “A Patriot for Me”, “Watch It Come Down” and “Time Present,” for which she won the London Evening Standard Award and Variety Club of Britain awards
Dictionary of Irish Biography:
Hobson, Valerie (1917–98), actress, was born 14 April 1917 at Larne, Co. Antrim, daughter of Commander Robert Gordon Hobson (1877–1940), naval officer, and Violette Hobson (née Hamilton-Willoughby). Educated at St Augustine’s Priory, London, she was stage-struck from a young age. Starting ballet at three, she was taught by Espinosa in London from the age of five. However, she was too tall to be a ballerina and settled instead on acting, enrolling in RADA. Her stage debut, at the age of 15, was in Basil Foster’s ‘Orders are orders’, where she was spotted by Oscar Hammerstein, who cast her in his West End show ‘Ball at the Savoy’ in Drury Lane. This showcased her talents as a comedienne and led to a series of appearances in British B movies, including Two hearts in waltz time, The path to glory, and Badger’s Green, all in 1934. Still a minor, she had to be accompanied to the studio by her nanny. At 18 she won a contract with Universal Studios; however, Hollywood proved a disappointment. After appearing in a succession of farces and thrillers, of which only The bride of Frankenstein (1935) is remembered, she fell victim to the reorganisation of the studios in the mid 1930s, following a financial crisis, and her contract was not renewed, though her marked prowess as a screamer meant that Universal filed her top decibels in the studio sound library.
Back in England she was cast opposite Douglas Fairbanks, jr, in Jump for glory (1937), in which she caught the eye of Alexander Korda, who signed her to a long-term contract. She made, however, only two films for Korda: The drum (1938), about the North-West Frontier, and Q planes (1939) with Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier. During this period she also worked twice for Michael Powell: in The spy in black (1939) and Contraband(1940), both with Conrad Veidt. In 1939 she married Anthony Havelock-Allan, her former co-star in Badger’s Green and now a producer. Three years later she was offered a second Hollywood contract by David O. Selznick, who wanted her for Jane Eyre. However, with the war at its height she was unwilling to leave her husband. He subsequently founded, with David Lean and Ronald Neame, the Cineguild production company, of which he was eventually head. Cineguild provided Hobson with some of her strongest roles, including Estella in David Lean’s Great expectations (1946) and the title role in Blanche Fury (1948), a period melodrama with Stewart Granger. Excellent as Estella, a part that suited what the Daily Telegraph (14 Nov. 1998) called the ‘slightly smug, lecturing strain in her on-screen personality’, she was not in general convincing as the love interest. Although beautiful, with long auburn hair, she was upper-crust and aloof and seemed too prim and ladylike to appear opposite matinée idols such as Granger and Gérard Philippe.
Havelock-Allan left Cineguild in 1947, taking Hobson with him. Together they made The small voice (1948), about an ordinary family held to ransom by escaped convicts. Her subsequent career consisted of minor melodramas and comedies, of which the most celebrated is Kind hearts and coronets (1949) opposite Alec Guinness. The part of the prudish, aristocratic Edith D’Ascoyne suited her talents perfectly, as did that of the governess in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical ‘The king and I’, which she played in Drury Lane in 1953 after a long absence from the stage. Though not musically trained, she made a success of the part and the play ran for a year. Remarking that she was unlikely to be offered as good a role again, she retired at the age of 37. Her last screen appearance was in Knave of hearts (1954). That year she married (31 December) the wealthy tory MP for Stratford (1950–63), Jack Profumo, having divorced Havelock-Allan in 1952.
A life as socialite, MP’s wife, and mother was disrupted by the ‘Profumo scandal’ of 1963. Her husband, secretary of state for war since 1960, denied in the house of commons (22 March 1963) having had an affair with Christine Keeler, the lover of a Soviet official. Subsequently proved to have lied, he had to resign both from his ministry and his seat three months later. Hobson told Lord Denning, who conducted an inquiry, that stress, exhaustion, and sleeping pills contributed to her husband’s making his false statement to the commons. She stood by him and joined him in his later career as charity worker. He established the Toynbee Hall centre in east London for people experiencing alcoholism and drug addiction (for which he received a CBE in 1975) while she put her energy into working for children with intellectual disabilities (with whom she had an affinity, as her eldest son from her first marriage had Down’s syndrome). For Lepra, a leprosy relief organisation, she dreamed up the ‘ring appeal’, which encouraged wealthy people, including members of the royal family, to hand over rings to raise money. She died 13 November 1998 in England, and was survived by both husbands and a son from each marriage: Mark Havelock-Allan and the writer David Profumo
Eileen Pollock was born in 1947 in Belfast. She is best known for her part in the long running television series “Bread”. Her film credits include”Far and Away”, “A Love Divided” and “Angela’s Ashes”. Eileen Pollock died in
‘Guardian’ obituary in 2021.
My friend and colleague, the actor Eileen Pollock (Polly), has died aged 73. She was best known for playing Lilo Lil in the BBC sitcom Bread (1986-91), about the Liverpudlian Boswell family. The role was originally written as native Liverpool, so Polly tried out her Scouse on her taxi driver. When he asked what part of Australia she came from, she decided to stick to Irish. She loved playing the character, but other work meant more to her.
I first met Polly in the heady days of late-1970s feminism and ructions between the right and left in our union, Equity. Alternative theatre was booming. Polly worked with the political group Belt & Braces, but the lack of women’s roles led her to co-found the feminist companies Bloomers and Camouflage, and write much of their material. In 1989, she was a fiery Mother Jones in Fight Like Tigers, about the Irish-American union activist. Polly was an articulate, passionate campaigner and outspoken socialist-feminist. As a friend said, she “could make the toughest of activists cower for an unguarded remark”. However, she was hugely generous and would give her last penny to anyone who was down on their luck.
Polly loved to laugh and adored being the wicked witch in panto, because, she said, “I can’t stand children and making them want to cry and scream is a wonderful battle of wits.” Friends remember a witty, creative, talented actor and playwright, who was full of ideas and loved to experiment. “Acting and playwriting were integral from a young age,” said her sister, Natalie.
Born in Belfast to Maura Keaney, a businesswoman, and William Pollock, a policeman, Polly attended Dominican college in Fortwilliam Park before going on to gain a BA in French and Spanish at Queen’s University Belfast. After involvement with the university’s drama society, Polly decided that acting was her future, although her parents hoped she’d get a “proper job” as a teacher, with a pension. After graduating, Polly worked briefly as a translator. Her first theatre position was at the Bush theatre, London, as an assistant stage manager.
Polly got every job she went for – rare for an actor. In her native Belfast, she worked with the Brian Friel/Stephen Rea company, Field Day, as Masha in Three Sisters (1981), opposite Rea in Pentecost (1987) and as Lady Wilde in Saint Oscar (1989). For Pam Brighton’s DubbelJoint theatre company, she was Kathleen Behan in the one-woman show Mother of All the Behans (1998) and Anna in Women on the Verge of HRT (1999). Polly gave acclaimed performances in Scenes from the Big Picture (National Theatre), Philadelphia, Here I Come (Liverpool Playhouse, 2004) and Henhouse (The Arcola, 2004).
Dermot Crowley was born in Cork in 1947. He has had a very profilic career in Britain. On film he has been in “Giro City” in 1982, “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi”, “Octopussy” and “Little Dorrit”. Dermot Crowley has just recently been in such popular television series as “Midsomer Murders”, “Foyle’s War” and “New Tricks”
TCM Overview:
Dermot Crowley was an accomplished actor who appeared in a variety of films throughout his Hollywood career. Crowley kickstarted his acting career in various films such as “Giro City” (1982), the Mark Hamill hit action picture “Return of the Jedi” (1983) and the action movie “Octopussy” (1983) with Roger Moore. He also appeared in the comedy “Blue Money” (1984) with Tim Curry and the Timothy Dalton historical feature “The Doctor and the Devils” (1985). His film career continued throughout the nineties and the early 2000s in productions like “Wilt” (1990), “Blake Edwards’ Son of the Pink Panther” (1993) and the comedy “Staggered” (1994) with Martin Clunes. He also appeared in “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (2000) with Will Smith. Film continued to be his passion as he played roles in the Inga Landgre documentary “Gud Lukt och Henne” (2008) and the Brendan O’Carroll foreign “Mrs. Brown’s Boys D’Movie” (2014). He also had a part in the TV miniseries “Bleak House” (2005-06). He also worked in television during these years, including a part on “Murder in Suburbia” (ITV 1, 2003-05). Crowley most recently acted in “The Best Offer” (2014).
Interview with Dermot Crowley can be accessed here.
Tony Scannell was born in 1945 in Kinsale, Co. Cork. His father was a reknowned Irish professional football player. Tony Scannell is best known for his performance as DS Roachin the long running “The Bill”. He made his TV debut in “Little Lord Fauntleroy” in 19776. His film credits onclude “Flash Gordon”, “At the Fun of the Fair” and “Point of View”.
The actor Tony Scannell, who has died aged 74, will be best remembered as the fiery maverick DS Ted Roach in the long-running television series The Bill, debuting in its second episode in 1984. During his stint the programme metamorphosed from a one-hour post-watershed series to a twice- then thrice-weekly year-round fixture of ITV’s primetime schedule, regularly pulling in more than 15 million viewers.
The Bill was a deliberately unglamorous depiction of British policing, portraying its officers as ordinary, flawed individuals. Roach was a hard-nut cop of the old school – a dogged investigator unafraid to bend the rules. Scannell’s performance was extremely watchable, making the detective a dyspeptic, spiky but likable tough guy, delivering his dialogue with a splenetic energy and jabbing finger, his sharp copper’s instinct often battling the effects of the previous night’s whisky intake.Advertisement
Roach’s testy relationship with the top brass matched Scannell’s own with the programme’s producers, and he left in 1993. His final episode provided an apposite departure involving fisticuffs, a clandestine romantic assignation, drinking on duty, and the culmination of his long-running feud with the by-the-book Inspector Monroe (Colin Tarrant). Ordered to apologise for thumping his nemesis, Ted refused and quit, storming out with a snarled lament about the changing face of the force.
Scannell’s authentic, committed turn made Roach a popular character and he reprised the role for two episodes in 2000 before being killed off in 2004, setting in motion a storyline for three ex-colleagues.
Born in Kinsale, County Cork, Tony was the eldest of the five children of Tommy Scannell, a professional footballer who was once capped for Ireland, and his wife, Peggy (nee O’Donovan). When Tony was five his father signed as a goalkeeper for Southend United, and the family moved to England as a result. However, Tony stayed behind in Cork to live with his grandmother so that he could be educated at the local Presentation Brothers college. After school he served briefly as an apprentice toolmaker before moving to England at the age of 15 to rejoin his family, who were by then living in Folkestone in Kent.
There he worked variously as a TV salesman, a singing bingo caller and a deckchair attendant before a five-year stint with the Royal Air Force, serving as a reconnaissance photographer in Cyprus. He became a radio disc jockey for the British Forces Broadcasting Service there, and helped out backstage at the camp’s theatre group in order to avoid guard duty. When he left the forces that experience, along with the encouragement of future Bill co-star Larry Dann, secured Scannell employment as an assistant stage manager at the Cambridge Arts theatre in 1968.
He trained at the East 15 Acting School in Loughton, Essex, and immediately upon graduating played Elyot in Jack Watling’s showcase production of Private Lives (Frinton, 1974). He then joined Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop, appearing at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, in, among other productions, Dracula (1974) and Bloody Mary (1975). He toured in Happy as a Sandbag (as Max Miller and Winston Churchill, 1977) and Hull Truck’s The New Garbo (1978), and performed in Four Weeks in the City for the National Theatre (Cottesloe, 1978).
He made his TV debut in 1976 and played small roles in Enemy at the Door (1978), The Professionals (1979) and the film Flash Gordon (1980) before getting better parts in Armchair Thriller (The Circe Complex, 1980), Strangers (1981) and The Gentle Touch (1981). When the call came to audition for The Bill he was working as a salvage diver.
In later years he was a regular in the Channel 5 soap opera Family Affairs (as the conman Eddie Harris, 1997-99), made a good account of himself as Tony Booth – opposite Sue Johnston’s Pat Phoenix – in the TV movie The Things You Do for Love: Against the Odds (1998), displayed knowing comic timing in Charlie Brooker’s Unnovations (2001), guested in Waking the Dead (2007) and starred in the film The Haunting of Harry Payne (also known as Evil Never Dies, 2014). He made his West End debut in Wait Until Dark (Garrick theatre, 2003) and became a regular in pantomime (Abanazer a speciality).
No stranger to tabloid intrusion, and despite being declared bankrupt in 2002, he had few regrets – he said he enjoyed the celebrity life to the full even if he had not always known how to handle it. He met the actor Agnes Lillis during a 1993 production of An Evening with Gary Lineker at the Jersey Opera House – she introduced him to Buddhism and he became a member of the Buddhist movement SGI-UK. This, and settling with Agnes to enjoy a quiet family life in Suffolk in 1995, gave him a contentment that had eluded him in his hedonistic days. They formed a theatre company – Eastbound – which performed short tours of local theatres and taught adult acting evening classes at the Seagull theatre in Lowestoft.
He is survived by Agnes and their children, Tom and Sophie, and by a daughter, Julya, from a relationship with Penny Ansell, and a son, Sean, from his 1971 marriage to Melanie Self, which ended in divorce.
• Thomas Anthony Scannell, actor, born 14 August 1945; died 26 May 2020
Frank Grimes was born in 1947 in Dublin. He was just twenty when he gained prominence at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin for his performance as the young Brendan Behan in “The Borstal Boy”. He was nominated for a Tony in 1970 when the play transferred to Broadway. He was due to play the title part in “Francis of Assisi” for Franco Zefferelli but the part was finally played by Graham Faulkner. He has acted on the stage in London many times in plays directed by Lindsay Anderson. His films include “And No One Could Sace Her” with Lee Remick in 1973 , “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Old Crowd”. In 1980 he won widespread critical acclaim for his performance as the young priest Fr O’Connor in RTE’s “Strumpet City”. More recently he has been in “Coronation Street” as Barry Connor. Page on Wiki Coronation Street webpage here.
Frank Grimes. Wikipedia
Frank Grimes was born in 1947 is an Irish stage and screen actor.
Grimes was born in Dublin. He achieved his first major success as the young Brendan Behan in the 1967 stage adaptation of Behan’s autobiography, Borstal Boy, at the Abbey Theatre.[1] When the production moved to Broadway, Grimes was nominated for a Tony Awardfor best actor.
In the early 1970s, Grimes moved to London where he came to the attention of director Lindsay Anderson. Anderson offered him a part in his production of David Storey‘s play The Farm, the success of which established Grimes’ reputation in British theatre.
Grimes’ most significant film role to date is the part of Major Fuller in Richard Attenborough‘s A Bridge Too Far (1977). However, he is probably best known, in his native Ireland at least, for his performance as Father O’Connor in RTÉ‘s drama series, Strumpet City. In 1981, Grimes received a Jacob’s Award “for his detailed and exceptionally convincing portrayal” of the young priest.
Frank Grimes continues to work in television, films and theatre. Recent TV appearances include the recurrent role of Barry Connor in Coronation Street. In 2013 he appeared as Mrs McCarthy’s husband in the Father Brown episode “The Mayor and the Magician”.
.Clodagh Rodgers was born in 1947 in Ballymena, Co Antrim in Northern Ireland. In 1971 she representated the U.K. in the Eurovision Song Contect with “Jack In The Box”. Detailed biography can be found on Wikipedia here.
The actor Doreen Keogh, who has died aged 93, secured herself a place in television history by playing Coronation Street’s first barmaid at the Rovers Return, Concepta Riley. She brought to the ITV soap opera, which was broadcast live or recorded “as live” in its early days, a wealth of experience in theatre. Once, while speaking outside the pub to its landlord, Jack Walker (played by Arthur Leslie), she went to open the doors, only to find them locked. “You’re as bad as Harry – he’s always locking himself out,” she improvised. “I’ll go round the back.” This quick thinking earned a grateful embrace from the director at the end of the transmission.
Although she was an original cast member, Keogh was not seen on the soap’s launch night, 9 December 1960, but made her first appearance in the fifth episode, two weeks later. Concepta was seen returning from a festive visit to her family in Ireland and was conceived by the serial’s creator, Tony Warren, as a character providing some variation to the north of England accents, like the Polish refugee Ivan Cheveski played by the Austrian actor Ernst Walder.
Concepta became a confidante of the Rovers’ landlady, Annie Walker (Doris Speed), and married Harry Hewitt (Ivan Beavis), a widowed bus inspector, in 1961, becoming stepmother to his wayward daughter, Lucille (Jennifer Moss). Together, Concepta and Harry had a son, Christopher, who provided drama when he was abducted – but eventually found with a disturbed friend of Elsie Tanner’s daughter. Away from the cameras, Keogh and Beavis had an off-screen relationship.
In 1964, the Hewitts – minus Lucille, who was taken in by Jack and Annie – moved to Ireland to run the Riley family garage and shop. Their departure was part of a cull of more than half a dozen characters by Coronation Street’s new producer, Tim Aspinall, that included the controversial death of Martha Longhurst (Lynne Carol). Some of the axed actors, including Keogh, finished the year by touring in Vince Powell and John Finch’s stage comedy Firm Foundations.
However, Keogh did make several brief returns to Coronation Street. In 1967, Concepta and Harry travelled to the fictional Weatherfield for Elsie’s wedding to Steve Tanner – during their visit, Harry was crushed to death by Len Fairclough’s van after a jack collapsed.
Five years later, Concepta was back to announce that she was marrying Sean Regan – who made a pass at Bet Lynch – and, in 1975, on another short visit, Concepta admitted to Annie that she knew Sean was unfaithful but she loved him. In all, Keogh appeared in 320 episodes of Coronation Street.
She was born in Dublin, to John Keogh, a librarian, and his wife, Alice (nee Mullany), and acted in school festivals while attending Holy Faith Convent, in the city’s Clontarf suburb, as well as joining a local amateur dramatics society. After training at the Abbey theatre school, Dublin, Keogh performed with the sixth Earl of Longford’s company at the Gate theatre in productions such as Sophocles’ Oedipus, the Tyrant (1942) and acted and sang on Irish radio.
She then moved to London and played Christine Horan in a 1945 adaptation of AE Coppard’s short story The Man from Kilsheelan, the first of dozens of BBC radio plays in which she acted over more than 60 years.
Her prolific theatre appearances included playing Cloyne in a 1953 British tour of Sean O’Casey’s play Purple Dust, directed by Sam Wanamaker, and roles in the West End productions Say Goodnight to Grandma (St Martin’s theatre, 1973), Once a Catholic (Wyndham’s, 1978) and Ducking Out (Duke of York’s, 1982). With the Royal Shakespeare Company, she played Mrs O’Toole in Look Out … Here Comes Trouble! (Donmar Warehouse, 1978) and Mrs Madigan in Juno and the Paycock (Aldwych, 1980).
Keogh made her TV debut as Miss Fulton in Denis Johnston’s crime drama Death at Newtownstewart (1948) and followed it with other BBC plays that fitted in around her stage commitments.
Her later television roles included Mary in Inside Out (1985), a comedy-drama about an agency helping ex-cons to find employment, Imelda Egan (1997-99) in Ballykissangel, Audrey Gifford – mother of Pete – in Cold Feet (1998-2003) and the quirky neighbour Mary Carroll in The Royle Family, between 1998 and 2006.
Keogh also made a one-off appearance as Mrs Candour in Crossroads in 1969 and played Mrs Dineen, physically fighting over a tea-shop bill with Mrs Doyle, in Father Ted in 1998. By then, she had returned to Ireland and took the role of Mary O’Hanlon in the Irish soap Fair City from 1989 to 1995.
Keogh had many supporting roles in films, including playing a mother superior in the IRA hunger strike drama Some Mother’s Son (1996), and appeared alongside Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson in the musical Darling Lili (1970), directed by Blake Edwards.
A lover of dogs, donkeys and ducks, she supported animal welfare charities and was an avid Liverpool football club fan. In 2007, she appeared in a spoof Irish election commercial for Alone, a charity for the elderly. As “Betty from the Grey Tigers party”, she urged the electorate to vote so that “your granny would be proud of you”.
Keogh’s 1954 marriage to the actor Frank Singuineau ended in divorce nine years later. She is survived by her second husband, Jack Jenner, whom she married in 1976.
• Doreen Sheila Elsie Keogh, actor, born 10 April 1924; died 31 December 2017
Joan Turner was born in Belfast in 1922. She had a long career in Britain as a singer. She made a few films including “Baby Needs A New Pair of Shoes” in 1974 and “No Surrender”. Joan Turner died in 2009.
Her “Telegraph” obituary:
At the pinnacle of her career Joan Turner became the highest-earning female singer and comedienne in the country, with a recording contract, her own radio and television shows, and a one-woman cabaret show in which she toured Britain and the United States; in 1980 she appeared at the Carnegie Hall in New York. In London she was the star of Royal Variety Shows at the Palladium and in West End musicals. As she became overwhelmed by personal problems, however, she disappeared from view; and in 2001, when she was 79, she was unearthed in Los Angeles, shuffling along Sunset Boulevard, still nurturing a hope that she would break into Hollywood.
Joan Turner strove to put a brave face on her reversal of fortune, which, in a Channel 4 documentary screened that year, she sought to represent as more of an adventure than a catastrophe. But there was no disguising her drink problem. “I just couldn’t give it up,” she confessed. “I was down to, like, three dollars. You lose a bit of hope, you know, when you run out of money.” All that stood between her and destitution was her British state pension of £50 a week, Once described as possessing the “the voice of an angel and the wit of a devil”, Joan Turner was an artist of impressive versatility. With a soaring voice that could encompass four and a half octaves, she could handle operatic arias, perform impressions – her repertoire included Gracie Fields, Shirley Temple, Bette Davis, Vera Lynn and even George Formby – and rattle out stand-up comedy routines. It was a range of talent that earned her the accolade of “the female Harry Secombe”, and the critic Jack Tinker crowned her “the greatest of the old time funny ladies”.
But although she appeared to have the world at her feet in the 1950s, Joan Turner’s drinking and gambling addictions were becoming common knowledge in showbusiness circles. She enjoyed the company of the biggest stars of the day, and boasted of an amorous encounter with the actor Peter Sellers when they were both appearing at Bridlington in 1952. “It was in the bushese_SLps and over in a flash,” she noted while preparing her unpublished memoirs. Her other claimed conquests included the magician David Nixon as well as the comedians Tony Hancock and Terry-Thomas, both of whom, it seemed, were too drunk to consummate matters.
Joan Theresa Turner was born in the Falls Road, Belfast, on November 24 1922, the daughter of a Roman Catholic British soldier serving in Northern Ireland. In the course of a street battle during the Troubles which had spread from the south, a stray bullet narrowly missed the infant Joan, asleep in a makeshift cot, and lodged in a drawer an inch from her head. After her family had returned to London, her father found work first as a bus driver and later driving a taxi. Joan, meanwhile, having won a scholarship to the Sacred Heart convent in Victoria, defied the mother superior by abandoning her education aged 14 to go into showbusiness, soon landing a spot in music hall. Parts in revue shows followed. Having cut her teeth on working men’s clubs in the north, she established herself as a formidable comic talent. She became one of the stars of the anarchic comedy group the Crazy Gang, appearing with them in their long-running show at the Victoria Palace and in the Royal Command Performances of 1954 and again in 1963. On the latter occasion she appeared alongside the up-and-coming Beatles, above whom she had been given star billing at the Grosvenor House Hotel in the group’s first London cabaret show. She had featured roles in the West End hits Oliver! and Call Me Madam and starred at the Talk of the Town.
Throughout this period Joan Turner had struggled to control, or at least to contain, her alcoholism. She joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and found herself in rehab alongside George Best, Tommy Cooper and George Peppard. But her problems with drink and gambling (she was particularly addicted to playing the one-armed bandit) deepened. In 1977, after a final royal engagement to celebrate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, Joan Turner was declared bankrupt. The following year, when she was appearing as Mrs Bumble in a West End revival of Oliver!, she was sacked for hurling empty wine bottles out of her dressing-room window at the Albery Theatre. During the 1970s she had toured her own show, Joan Turner Unlimited, throughout Britain, and in 1980 she took it to America, where she lived, drank and – sporadically – worked for seven years. On her return to Britain, an award-winning appearance in The Belle of Belfast City at the Contact Theatre, Manchester, led to her being cast in 1991 as Aunty Lou in the Liverpool-based Channel 4 soap Brookside. But she was drinking heavily again, and was fired within a few weeks.
By 1996 she was back in the United States, still hoping to kick-start her career in Hollywood. She auditioned unsuccessfully for the Palm Springs Follies, a troupe of dancers aged 60 or more, and then spent two years in Las Vegas, with the inevitable result: “I couldn’t stop gambling.” She eventually returned to Los Angeles by Greyhound bus, her savings reduced to less than £50. Slumped on a pavement on Skid Row, alone and penniless, Joan Turner mixed with down-and-outs and drunks before eventually being taken in by Catholic nuns who ran a hostel for the homeless. In 2001, after her plight had been featured in British newspapers, her daughters paid for her flight home.
Joan Turner appeared in three films: Alan Bleasdale’s No Surrender (1985); Scandal (1989), in which she had a cameo role; and Louisa and the Jackpot, which starred Oliver Reed but has never been released.
She made her final television appearance in 2004, as Mrs Sunnelly in the ITV crime series Commander II, created by her friend Lynda La Plante. Her last live comeback attempt, at a small London theatre that summer, ended in a drunken shambles. Joan Turner spent her final years in sheltered accommodation in Surrey where, with the actor Harry Dickman, she worked on a poignant autobiography called I Thought It Grew on Trees and spoke of her “adventures” as a down-and-out in Los Angeles. The book awaits a publisher. In 1992 Lynda La Plante wrote to Joan Turner: “Nothing will ever take away your extraordinary talent, a talent that is as fragile as a bubble. It floats in its unexplainable way from inside you, like the child you still profess to be. You stand, and laugh, and make everyone want to laugh with you. It is precious in its simplicity.”
Both Joan Turner’s marriages – to a solicitor, Christopher Page, and to a record company executive, Les Cocks – ended in divorce. Her three daughters survive her.
Her “Telegraph” obituary can also be accessed here.
Kenneth Branagh was born in Belfast in 1960. When he was nine his parents moved to the UK. In 1982 he starred on television in three plays about the one character Billy written by Grahan Reid. The same year he starred in “Another Country” on stage. He had made his film debut in a small part in 1981 in “Chariots of Fire”. Throuout the 80’s and 90’s his career continued on a steller path – films like “A Month in the Country”, “Dead Again” and Peter’s Friends” and television work such as “Fortunes of War”kept him in the public eye. In recent years he scored huge praise for his title performance in “Wallander” a tale of a tired Swedish police officer.
His TCM biography:
Once hailed as the “new Laurence Olivier,” Shakespearean-trained actor and director Kenneth Branagh struggled throughout his career to balance his near-obsessive drive to work with the need for a somewhat normal, settled life. After his directorial breakthrough with his excellent interpretation of The Bard’s “Henry V” (1989), Branagh had what appeared to many to be the picture-perfect life: a beautiful wife in Emma Thompson, a thriving career – thanks to his deft thriller “Dead Again” (1991) – and a reputation replete with an air of seriousness and unerring artistic credibility. But on the inside, Branagh claimed to have been going a bit mad – a realization exacerbated by his separation from Thompson and the debacle of “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (1995). Later in life, he learned how to relax every now and then, but continued to push himself to greater artistic heights, sometimes to the point of failure, as with “Hamlet” (1996) and “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (2000). He rebounded, however, with a marvelous performance as a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt in “Warm Springs” (HBO, 2005), followed by an acclaimed turn as a brilliant but dysfunctional detective in the “Wallander” (PBS, 2009) miniseries and a return to the director’s chair for the superhero smash “Thor” (2011). With his heralded body of work as an actor, writer and director, Branagh had long emerged from Olivier’s shadow to be recognized as one of the more formidable filmmakers of his generation.
Born on Dec. 10, 1960 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Branagh was raised in a working class home devoid of any form of artistic expression; surprising for someone later intimately linked to the greatest writer of the English language. Branagh moved to England with his family when he was 10 and began his love affair with Shakespeare, reading 25-cent paperback volumes of his plays as an escape from schoolyard bullies who taunted him for being too much of a joker on the playground. An isolated child who sat enraptured in front of the TV, watching movies with James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy, Branagh later brought his desire to engage in fantasy to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he won the Bancroft Gold Medal for Outstanding Student of the Year and later earned Britain’s prestigious Best Newcomer award for his 1982 performance as Judd in “Another Country.” In a short time, Branagh had made a quick rise to become one of England’s promising new talents.
Branagh soon became a familiar face on British television, becoming a star of the acclaimed 1984 BBC trilogy “Too Late to Talk to Billy,” “A Matter of Choice for Billy” and “A Coming to Terms for Billy.” After making a name for himself with “Another Country,” he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at age 23, opening its 1984 season at Stratford-upon-Avon as the youngest “Henry V” in the troupe’s history. He also wrote and directed his first play, “Tell Me Honestly” (1985), presented as part of the inaugural season of “Not the RSC.” Deeming the RSC too large and impersonal, Branagh co-founded the Renaissance Theatre Company with David Parfitt. Though disbanded in 1994, Branagh successfully played “Hamlet,” staged his original play “Public Enemy,” which nearly bankrupted the company before it began, and mounted an acclaimed interpretation of “King Lear” – all before the age of 30.
He continued acting in high-quality British TV ventures such as the 1986 small screen version of Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” and the BBC’s acclaimed seven-part drama, “Fortunes of War” (1987), which joined him for the first time with frequent co-star and future wife, Emma Thompson. Finding time for two features, he played a bungling British agent posing as one-half of the archetypal English tourist couple in the weak-scripted “High Season,” but fared far better in his first leading role as a homosexual tormented by his World War I experiences in the plush period drama, “A Month in the Country” (both 1987). Branagh gained international recognition and dual Oscar nods as the director and star of the 1989 screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s lyrical “Henry V.” Strikingly dark and atmospheric, the pared-down film contrasted sharply with the lavishness and optimism of Laurence Olivier’s 1945 version, which reflected England’s enthusiasm for the war effort.
Branagh traveled to the United States to helm his next feature, the contemporary thriller “Dead Again” (1991). Dismissed by many reviewers for its overly complex story and emphasis on style over substance, “Dead Again” nonetheless was a commercial success. Branagh, however, came away disenfranchised with Hollywood, returning home to make “Peter’s Friends” (1992), a fey and overbearing British variation on “The Big Chill” that somehow managed to make the usually intelligent Thompson appear shrill. The same year, Branagh directed “Swan Song,” a short based on a Chekhov short story, starring John Gielgud as an aging actor who takes the stage in a closed theater to revisit the great Shakespearean characters he performed throughout his career. The film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Film – Live Action.
In his autobiography Beginning, written at age 28 in part to raise funds for his theater company, Branagh described himself as a “short-assed, fat-faced Irishman.” Lacking the matinee idol looks of the young Olivier, his somewhat plebeian features (pug nose, weak chin, and slightly jowly countenance) brought an earthy reality to his roles which did not always enhance the films. For instance, the 1940s segment of “Dead Again” would have benefited from more old-fashioned glamour and star power. In contrast, Branagh vividly recreated “Henry V” for modern audiences. His theater and TV work – such as his Jimmy Porter in a telecast of John Osborne’s play “Look Back in Anger” airing on Bravo in 1993 – consistently demonstrated that he was just as comfortable with modern types as with classic characters.
Branagh went back to his love of Shakespeare in adapting “Much Ado About Nothing” (1993) as a big-screen, all-star romp through Tuscany with Thompson, Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves. As he did for “Henry V,” Branagh largely dispensed with the traditional declamatory style in favor of more naturalistic line readings. The art-house hit enhanced his reputation as a canny popularizer of Shakespeare for modern movie audiences, paving the way for such things as Baz Luhrmann’s version of “Romeo and Juliet” in 1996 and “Shakespeare in Love” in 1998. He then took on a big budget, special effects, a name producer (Francis Ford Coppola) and a major star (Robert De Niro) in hopes of snaring a potentially wider audience with his “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (1994), even transforming himself into a long-haired, muscled hunk for his portrayal of Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Critical and popular responses were brutally unenthusiastic for his indulgent and ham-handed take on the classic novel.
Returning once again to Shakespeare, Branagh won critical acclaim for his turn as Iago to Laurence Fishburne’s “Othello” (1995) and also won praise for writing and directing “A Midwinter’s Tale” (1995). Filmed in black and white, the latter followed the travails of a troupe of actors attempting to mount a production of “Hamlet” with generally comic results. Branagh appeared as himself in Al Pacino’s documentary “Looking for Richard” (1996), which explored the Bard’s work through rehearsals for a filmed version of Richard III, then followed with his own big screen version of “Hamlet,” setting it in the 19th Century and playing the tortured, over-the-top Dane amidst an all-star cast that included Charlton Heston, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Jack Lemmon, Rosemary Harris, Derek Jacobi and many others. For his “Hamlet” – the first to use the complete Shakespearean text – Branagh won his fourth Oscar nomination (for Best Adapted Screenplay), but unlike the profitable “Much Ado,” the four-hour film failed to make back even half of its investment.
Branagh next collaborated with director Robert Altman, working from an original screenplay by John Grisham on “The Gingerbread Man” (1998). Though its January release was a box-office kiss of death, critics marveled at his dead-on Savannah accent and convincing portrayal of a lawyer who gets in hot water when he tries to protect a woman (Embeth Davidtz) he has just met. He then signed on with another legend and gave a performance that brought to mind the stuttering, neurotic persona of Woody Allen in Allen’s “Celebrity” (1998). Unfortunately, most people felt him hopelessly miscast as the messed-up New York magazine writer and that Allen was simply coasting, recycling ideas about infidelity dating back to his 1970s-era pictures. That year also saw Branagh in “Theory of Flight,” acting opposite his then-love Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he began a much-publicized relationship after his divorce from Thompson. “Theory of Flight” told the story of an uneasy friendship between a con man trying to construct his own backyard airplane and a motor-neuron disease sufferer who wants to lose her virginity before she dies. The film resolved itself in a funny, touching way, with the airplane serving as a metaphor for escape from earthly afflictions.
Returning to dreaded Hollywood, Branagh embarked on his biggest picture to date, portraying the villainous, legless Dr. Arliss Loveless, nemesis to Will Smith and Kevin Kline in “Wild Wild West” (1999). Despite the gargantuan investment, the flick turned out to be an embarrassment; all concept, no content. He reunited with Kline, however, to provide the voices for the leading characters in the animated film “The Road to El Dorado;” then contributed his distinctive vocals as the narrator of the Oscar-nominated animated short “The Periwig-Maker” (2000). In 1998, Branagh had announced plans to film three Shakespeare adaptations under the new banner of the Shakespeare Film Company, established in partnership with Intermedia and Miramax. He delivered the first of these in 2000, recasting “Love’s Labour’s Lost” as a breezy, 93-minute Hollywood musical, taking out some of the more impenetrable verse and substituting classic songs by George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. While he clearly had not lost his touch for making Shakespeare accessible and whetted appetites for his “Macbeth” and “As You Like It;” the dismal box-office returns made it unlikely that the other proposed films would appear.
Branagh was well cast as a quick-tempered, chain-smoking playwright in the comedy “How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog” (2002) and offered a neat cameo as an English bureaucrat in the based-on-fact “Rabbit Proof Fence” (2001), about three Aboriginal girls who walked to freedom in 1930s Australia. On the small screen, Branagh was mesmerizing in an Emmy-winning performance as Reinhard Heydrich, the man who led the notorious Wannsee Conference in the HBO original “Conspiracy” (2001), a role which earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries. He portrayed British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton in a Channel 4/A&E jointly produced miniseries “Shackleton.” (2002), another part for which he won much critical praise. Branagh next stepped into the fantasy realm as the vainglorious Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor Gilderoy Lockhart in the much anticipated family feature “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (2002).
Branagh made for a convincing Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the HBO telepic “Warm Springs” (2005), which chronicled the president’s life from his diagnosis with polio at age 39 through his fruitless quest for a miracle cure before pursing the high office. His compelling performance earned the actor Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. Sticking with the small screen, Branagh managed to bring to life Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy “As You Like It” (HBO, 2006), setting the film in the 19th century and starring Kline and a game Bryce Dallas Howard as the beguiling Rosalind. Continuing to enjoy working more behind the camera, Branagh directed the remake of “Sleuth” (2007), a comic game of cat-and-mouse between a brilliant writer and man of society (Michael Caine, assuming the role from Olivier from the 1972 version) seeking revenge on an out-of-work actor (Jude Law, taking over the part originally played by Caine) for stealing his wife.
After co-starring alongside Tom Cruise in “Valkyrie” (2008), he starred in and executive-produced three feature-length adaptations of Henning Mankell’s best-selling Wallander crime novels for the BBC. The three-part miniseries, “Wallander” (2009), later aired on PBS and earned the esteemed actor another Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of an existential detective whose empathy for murder victims takes its toll on his already dysfunctional personal life. That same year, he played a conservative government minister intent on shutting down off-shore broadcasting operations in the 1960s set docu-comedy “Pirate Radio” (2009). Branagh then took some time away from the spotlight to focus on his latest directorial effort, the big-budget adaptation of Marvel Comics’ “Thor” (2011). Although some fans of the property initially found Branagh an odd choice to helm the blockbuster, the classically-trained actor-director’s experience with bombastic, stylized period epics proved just the ticket, resulting in huge box-office business. In a bit of serendipity, he returned to screens later that year as the actor he had most often been compared to, Sir Laurence Olivier, in “My Week With Marilyn” (2011), a fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe’s (Michelle Williams) week touring London with a young film assistant (Eddie Redmayne) during the production of 1957’s “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Branagh’s performance earned him a number of accolades, including nominations at the Golden Globes and Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor.
His TCM biography can also be accessed online here.
Chris O’Dowd is a rising young Irish actor. He was born in Boyle, Co. Roscommon. He is a graduate of University College, Dublin. He began his acting career with the famed Druid Theatre in Galway. He also starred in the early seasons of Irish television series “The Clinic”. In the UK he was featured in “The IT Crowd” and “Roman Empire”. In 2009 he moved on to starring roles in “The Boat that Rocked” and “Hippie, Hippie, Shake”. Won rave reviews for his performance in “Bridesmaids” in 2011.
Chris O’Dowd interview in “The Telegraph”:
Here, pigeon! Pi-pi-pigeon, come on!” Chris O’Dowd is perched on a wall in the middle of a park in south London, attempting to entice a bunch of standard-issue, unkempt, cankerous-looking urban “rats-with-wings” by sprinkling muffin crumbs around him.
He’s complying with the wishes of theTelegraph photographer, but the tactic isn’t producing the Tippi Hedren-style shot he’s after.
The birds maintain discreet distance, possibly because O’Dowd’s dog Potato, a Jack Russell-cross, is straining at the leash and regarding the creatures with a canine gourmand’s eye. O’Dowd has another explanation. “I guess they’re just immune to my manifold charms,” he shrugs, aiming an ineffectual kick in the retreating pigeons’ direction.
If that’s the case, the birds are very much alone. The 31-year-old O’Dowd has spent the past five years honing his own particular brand of genial, loquacious slacker allure as Roy, the feckless computer geek, in four series of Graham Linehan’s Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedyThe IT Crowd.
Recently, he’s broadened his range, playing straight in the BBC’s period drama The Crimson Petal and the White. And now he’s hitting the Hollywood mainstream as one of the two specimens of male eye candy – the other being Jon Hamm, no less – in the comedy Bridesmaids, which stars Saturday Night Live alumnus and the film’s co-writer Kristen Wiig as Annie, whose maid-of-honour status, along with her life, unravels in the run-up to the wedding of her best friend.
“Yeah, there’s been some love, and some fun, and I don’t take any of it personally, even – or maybe especially – the positive stuff,” he says, as we settle down with cappuccinos at the park café.
“I know people are talking about the character, even if they’re saying my name. I like to think that when people meet me in real life, they go off me immediately.”
As if on counter-intuitive cue, O’Dowd’s girlfriend, the journalist and documentary-maker Dawn Porter, arrives to escort Potato home. There’s an exchange of “see you later honeys”, and O’Dowd settles into his chair.
He cuts a striking figure: 6ft 4in, somewhat leaner than the 15st he’s been known to attain, his off-duty-actor beard of a piece with his messy dark hair, dressed in jeans and Hawaiian shirt – the latter a variant on the ones he sported at the LA premiere of Bridesmaids and a recent slot on Conan O’Brien’s show. “I’m a Hawaiian shirt guy,” he says, with a grin. “I’ve made that life decision.”
O’Dowd is engaging company; with a default setting of convivial drollery. When informed that, at a screening of Bridesmaids the previous evening, the women present had reacted most emphatically to the most outré sexual scenes and jokes, he shakes his head: “Yup, if I know one thing about women, it’s that they’re filthy.”
He even responds to the news that attendees also had the chance to have their photo taken with a bow-tied, bare-chested hunk with near-equanimity. “In the US, they’re at pains to avoid the term ‘chick flick’ in connection with this film,” he laughs. “Here, they’re wheeling out the Chippendales.”
If “chick flick” is now on a par with “Mel Gibson vehicle” as a synonym for box-office morbidity, it’s because Bridesmaids arrives at a time when the debate over Hollywood’s “women problem” – the argument that “female-driven” films are a tough, if not impossible, sell to male moviegoers – has been reignited. Even the likes of Stacey Snider, the CEO of DreamWorks and one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, has opined that “girls revealing themselves as candid and raunchy doesn’t appeal to guys at all”.
For O’Dowd, the whole debate is specious. “Surely we’re past all this,” he says. “French and Saunders and Smack The Pony and Miranda Hart and a bunch of other people have killed this notion in the UK.
“I don’t think the public here buy this idea that women and men speak different comedic languages.” He takes a loud slurp of cappuccino. “I think Bridesmaids is a hoot, and I’m an alpha-male. So it’s clearly all ridiculous.”
The makers of Bridesmaids are pretty well-placed to tackle the conundrums. Wiig and her co-writer Annie Mumolo are graduates of the LA-based improv troupe The Groundlings, whose alumni include Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow. Director Paul Feig was the creator of the cherished-if-short-lived comedy/drama Freaks and Geeks.
Producer Judd Apatow meanwhile is the undisputed king of the bro-mance – The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up – with a company of stock players (Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Katherine Heigl) known to some as Apatown. His films, while undoubtedly manolescent-centric, have a little more EQ than most.
O’Dowd declares himself a “borderline fanboy” of the Apatow canon, even though “Judd had no idea who I was. But it turned out that Paul Feig was a big fan of The IT Crowd.”
O’Dowd has now become, if not a resident, then at least a non-dom of Apatown. Since Bridesmaids, he’s completed a film called Friends With Kids, which re-teams him with Wiig and Hamm. And he’s soon to start work on Apatow’s own new movie, This is Forty.
“It follows Paul Rudd and Lesley Mann’s characters from Knocked Up,” he says. “It’s an in-depth look at relationships, marriage and parenting in this kind of post-boomer generation.
“I can’t wait to get started on it, but they approach things very differently there; they’ll shoot until like three in the morning working on making the laughs better.”
O’Dowd puts it down to the tradition of rapid-fire improv troupes in which many of the principals cut their teeth. “Our only equivalent to that here is, unfortunately, panel shows,” he says. “Someone was interviewing me in the US recently and they said they had footage of me on game shows. I was like, what?
“It turned out they meant Never Mind the Buzzcocks. So that’s the difference – they have Chris Farley, we have Ian Hislop.”
Actors always downplay ambition, but O’Dowd makes his own progress sound more hapless than most: “I’ve gone up for loads of jobs in the past that I knew were going to be terrible, and I’ve done my best, and I still haven’t got them,” he says. “So I think I’ve been lucky in who’s decided I’d be worthy of their time.”
Still, he acknowledges that Bridesmaids has the potential to take things up a notch. “Though it’s hard to look at it in a rational, tangible way when you’re broke, which I am,” he says brightly.
“My last two jobs were indie movies that didn’t pay anything; I didBridesmaids a year ago, and the money wasn’t brilliant. So, yeah, it was a big moment to go on Conan O’Brien, but then I realised my cable was turned off because I couldn’t afford it. So I’m on a chat show I can’t afford to watch.”
Penury aside, he’s grateful that such recognition as he currently enjoys came gradually. “I mean, it must be f—— weird to be some 20 year-old heading up Thor or something, right?” he says.
“With The IT Crowd, it built slowly and got better as it went on; I was pretty bad in the first series.” A fifth season has been mooted, but Linehan is busy with a stage version of The Ladykillers, while Katherine Parkinson has just starred in The School for Scandal at the Barbican and Richard Ayoade enjoyed acclaim for Submarine, the coming-of-age movie he wrote and directed.
“Richard’s a genius, isn’t he?” beams O’Dowd, who comes over all bro-mantic when Ayoade’s name is mentioned. “That film left me reeling. I’m so proud of him.”
O’Dowd now seems ready for his own close-up, not least on the evidence of his appearance on O’Brien’s show, where he regaled the host by claiming to have “you know, actually penetrated” Wiig during their sex scene in Bridesmaids (at her express request, of course) and went on to recount his upbringing in Roscommon, where, as the youngest of five, his older sisters would hold him down and spit in his mouth. The latter story, he allows, is veracious: “But I left out the bit where they chased me with pokers.”
His father was a graphic designer and part-time guitarist, his mother a psychotherapist. It was an arty, permissive household, but acting didn’t factor in until he hightailed it to University College Dublin – “the choices back home were the fish factory or my dad’s business; I didn’t fancy the first and was useless at the second” – where his politics degree got increasingly short shrift as he immersed himself in the campus DramSoc.
He originally wanted to be a speech writer and continues to write; he’s currently developing a sitcom for Sky based on the short he made last year about a bullied 11 year-old with a morbid fear of Santa and a tall, bearded, 31-year-old imaginary friend who, he admits, is not a million miles from himself. And he has “a couple” of films in development in the US: “There are plenty of irons in the fire,” he says, “and we’ll see if any of them miraculously turn into silver coins.”
O’Dowd needs to go, but, in parting, he shares some final thoughts on Twitter – “It’s essentially the same as graffiti on the back of a toilet door, but I need a bump in followers, so can you say that I’m @BigBoyler?” – and Porter, who he’s heading home to. “She’s relaxed and bright and great,” he smiles. “Going out with other actors is never good; actresses are neurotic, and actors are horrendous egotists.”
So he’s as sorted as any hapless, spasmodically employed, horrendous egotist could be?
“I hope Bridesmaids leads to good stuff and I’ll have more opportunities to work with good people, but it’s more difficult than you’d imagine to say no sometimes. So don’t be surprised if I turn up in a pile of shite.”
And he lopes off, scattering disgruntled pigeons in his wake.
His “Telegraph” interview can also be accessed online here.
TCM overview:
Although most Americans know him for playing the affable Officer Rhodes in “Bridesmaids” (2011), Chris O’Dowd was already a major star in Britain prior to his breakthrough performance in the Judd Apatow-produced wedding comedy. As the star of the British sitcom, “The IT Crowd” (Channel 4, 2006-2010), O’Dowd played a socially awkward computer geek named Roy. The show made O’Dowd a household name in Britain, and before long he was being courted by Hollywood, appearing in brief but memorable roles in such films as “Pirate Radio” (2009), “Dinner for Shmucks” (2010) and “Gulliver’s Travels” (2010). But it was O’Dowd’s role as the love interest of Kristen Wiig’s character in “Bridesmaids” that made him a bona-fide Hollywood star. That film would go on to gross nearly $300 million at the box office in the summer of 2011, firmly minting Chris O’Dowd as one of the film world’s newest big-screen funnymen.
O’Dowd was born in Sligo, Ireland, and grew up in the small town of Boyle, which had a population of 3,000. A somewhat awkward youth — he was already 6 feet fall by his 11th birthday — O’Dowd played soccer all throughout his teens. Once high school was over, however, he hung up his cleats and enrolled at University College in Dublin. O’Dowd studied politics and sociology while attending the school (his mother was a psychotherapist), but quickly realized that college was not for him. He dropped out shortly after and moved to London to pursue acting. O’Dowd took a job at a charity call-in center to pay the bills, while frequently skipping out to attend auditions. He appeared in minor roles in British dramas such as “Conspiracy of Silence” (2003) and “Vera Drake” (2004), before landing the role of Roy Trenneman on “The IT Crowd.” O’Dowd appeared in all four seasons of the show, which revolved around several tech employees working at a London-based corporation. The show ended in 2010, making O’Dowd a major star in the process. However, with the release of “Bridesmaids” the following summer, the 31-year-old actor would show the world his career was only just beginning.
O’Dowd had an inkling that “Bridesmaids” would be a smash hit. Despite appearing in two major Hollywood movies the year prior, O’Dowd recalled a familial atmosphere on the set of “Bridesmaids” that was much different than his previous American filmmaking experiences. When “Bridesmaids” opened to glowing reviews in May of 2011, eventually earning two Academy Award nominations, O’Dowd’s suspicions proved correct. That same year he reteamed with several of his “Bridesmaids” cast members in the comedy “Friends With Kids,” before appearing in Apatow’s dramedy about married life, “This is 40” (2012). That film was a sequel to “Knocked Up” (2007), with O’Dowd playing a hipster record executive. In early 2013 O’Dowd appeared on the second season of the HBO series “Girls” (HBO, 2012); he reprised his role as a wealthy venture capitalist on the show’s second season.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Elaine Cassidy was born in 1979 in Wicklow. In 1999 she won the major role in “Felicia’s Journey” with Bob Hoskins, which was based on the novel by William Trevor. Other films include “Disco Pigs”, “The Others” and “The Bay of Love and Sorrows”. In 2009 she starred in the American television series “Harper’s Island”, Elaine Cassidy website here.
Article from “MailOnline”: Elaine Cassidy couldn’t be happier.
The costume drama set in a department store in north-east England in the 1870s was a huge hit on its first outing last year, and Elaine has been relishing getting to grips with her headstrong aristocratic character Katherine Glendenning once more.
Elaine Cassidy
The last we saw of her, Katherine had been jilted by department store owner John Moray (Emun Elliott). But, while she was away with her father she met enigmatic former soldier Tom Weston (Ben Daniels) in Portugal and quickly married him. ‘They embark on a lovely, dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship. It’s cat-and-mouse, really tempestuous,’ says Elaine, 33, her brown eyes dancing with mischief.
It was quite the opposite, she says, of working with Ben, which she thoroughly enjoyed. ‘The only trouble is we make each other laugh. There was one scene where I was lying in bed. I turned around and there he was, trying to frighten me by suddenly appearing in the room. Then I noticed he was sticking a pin in his leg to stop himself laughing, which set me off.’
Although its setting is the north-east, The Paradise is in fact based on writer Emile Zola’s 1883 novel, Au Bonheur des Dames, which in turn was based on the French department store Le Bon Marché.
The action for the first series of the BBC series began in 1875 and portrayed the lives and loves of the people who worked and shopped in what was the first English department store, owned by widower John Moray. Into this world arrived Denise Lovett from Peebles on the Scottish borders.
When she landed a job at The Paradise, she was quickly identified by Moray as a rising star, much to the annoyance of Miss Audrey (Sarah Lancashire), head of ladies’ fashion, and shopgirl Clara (Sonya Cassidy).
Elaine Cassidy
Moray was financially dependent on Lord Glendenning, whose daughter Katherine was determined to marry him in spite of any attraction he felt for Denise. As it turned out, Katherine’s worst fears were realised.
New life: In the last series, Katherine married former soldier Tom Weston (Ben Daniels), and the actress says viewers will this series get to explore their ‘lovely, dysfunctional, unhealthy relationship’
When Moray abandoned Katherine for Denise at the end of the last series, Lord Glendenning’s vengeance was swift on behalf of his jilted daughter. He took ownership of the store and Moray fled to Paris. A year later, the store is struggling to survive and when Moray arrives back on the scene, he finds himself working as manager for new owners Katherine and Tom, and the stage is set for a battle royal.
‘Now the characters are established, you can motor along a bit more,’ says Elaine. ‘Katherine’s quite a piece of work. She’s in your face. But I’ve tried hard not to make her a pantomime villain. She’s a real person with real feelings but totally different from me.’
To understand Katherine’s motivation better, Elaine’s been reading a book called Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody. ‘She maintains that, if two people have the same fundamental beliefs when it comes to life’s essential issues, then the relationship should be very easy. But if they’re different, you have to compromise to make your relationship work.’
Elaine herself struck lucky in love in 2004 when she was cast opposite actor Stephen Lord in black comedy The Truth.
‘He was playing a lying sex addict; I was playing a girl in a wheelchair. His character abused my character – and then we fell in love, for real. We’ve also played brother and sister which wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be.
‘When I first met Stephen it was like being on holiday. That’s why my life works. I’m grounded at home. All the drama comes with my work which is why I do the job I do. I saw a documentary about Richard Burton, which said the most harmonious time he had with Elizabeth Taylor was when they were taking lumps out of each other in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?’
Stephen is probably best known as Jase, father of Jay, in EastEnders. ‘I used to watch every episode,’ says Elaine. ‘In fact, I cried when he was killed. He was in it for 13 months but he was keen to play other roles.
Every now and then, even today, you’ll see Jay sitting on the bench in Albert Square touching the initials of his dad carved into the wood. Whenever it happens, Stephen’s mum sends him a text telling him he’s been mentioned again.’
The couple have a four-year-old daughter, Kila – it rhymes with ‘smiler’ – and a son, Lynott, born in January, his name a nod to Thin Lizzy’s hellraising frontman Phil Lynott. By the end of filming the first series of The Paradise, Elaine was six months pregnant with Lynott. ‘They were having to hide the bump behind chairs and table lamps.’
Ever since she knew what the word acting meant, she says, she wanted to do it. She first encountered an audience playing Pinocchio aged five at school in County Wicklow, where she was raised alongside her two older sisters, and never looked back.
‘My mum would have preferred I’d got a proper job but she’s always supported me. She worried about the uncertainty, but then uncertainty is no longer confined to acting, is it?’
She was offered a handful of places at drama college but then won the title role in the film Felicia’s Journey, starring Bob Hoskins. ‘It was a brilliant start to my career. After that I kept being sent similar roles, all of which I turned down. If I’d wanted to keep playing the same part, I’d have gone into a soap.’
She also enjoys theatre work and recalls starring with Eileen Atkins and Imelda Staunton in There Came A Gypsy Riding at London’s Almeida Theatre as a defining moment. ‘It was like a nightly masterclass. I’ll never forget Imelda having to suffer a nervous breakdown every performance and making it look so easy. I’d sometimes think, “Should I get my coat now? Or should I strive for that?”’
It very much looks like she made the right decision.
Tony Doyle was born in 1942 in Roscommon in Ireland. He began acting on television in 1963 and a few years later he played Fr Sheehy in the long running Irish drama “The Riordans”. In 1967 he made his first film, an adaptation by Joseph Strick of James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Other fims included “Quackser Fortune has a Cousin in the Bronx”, “Who Dares Win” and “A Love Divided”. He starred in many very popular television dramas including “Between the Lines” and “Ballykissangel”. He delivered a stunning performance in “Amongst Women”. Tony Doyle died suddenly in 2000 at the age of 57.
His “Guardian” obituary:
The sudden death of the actor Tony Doyle, at the age of 57, has deprived Ireland of one of its greatest dramatic talents. Although best known to television audiences as Brian Quigley, the scheming local businessman in the BBC1 series Ballykissangel, his acting credits cover an extraordinary range of work on stage, radio, film and television in Britain and Ireland. Tony was born in Frenchtown, Roscommon, on the Sligo-Leitrim border, where his father was a police sergeant. Later, the family moved to Churchtown, Dublin, when his father was stationed there in the late 1950s. He went to University College, Dublin, and later, took acting courses with Brendan Smyth in Dublin, while working briefly with a US oil company based in Dublin.
He began his acting career with small independent groups in Dublin, before moving to London where he played a number of roles in fringe theatre. I vividly recall him, dressed in a silver suit in a small theatre in Islington, singing Stewart Parker’s pastiche of a 1970s Eurovision Contest song, Der Zig Zag Zong, in the play Catchpenny Twist. It stole the show. Tony was passionate about the theatre and loved working on the stage. There were a number of roles at the Royal Court, London, including an exceptional performance in Ron Hutchinson’s Rat In The Skull, and at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, where his performance in The Gigli Concert was an emotional tour-de-force. His television curriculum vitae lists no fewer than 81 titles. They include films such as The Hen House and The Nightwatch, directed by Danny Boyle, and his first major series role as the complex policeman John Deakin in the BBC crime drama, Between the Lines. He was also a brilliant radio actor. Only last week BBC Radio 4 audiences had the pleasure of hearing him read a series of ghost stories. I understand from the young producer who worked with him that Tony’s kindness to inexperienced raido producers had remained unchanged since I first worked with him in the late 1970s. Outside his dedication to acting, it was clear that Tony’s family and close friends were the most important things to him. He rarely took breaks from work but, when he did, it was often to spend time with his artist wife Sally in their house in France. He had three children from his first marriage – one of whom, Susannah, played the secretary, Joy, in Channel 4’s Drop The Dead Donkey – and three from his second. Tony’s strength as an actor came from his qualities as a man. He had a natural authority, warmth, humour and intelligence, which informed all the roles he played. Anyone who worked with him recognised his uncanny ability to find something oddly heroic in all the manifestations of human weakness. Even when the characters he portrayed were cruel, ruthless or pathetic, one sensed they had an equal capacity for humour and tragedy. Perhaps this explains the exceptional range of the parts he played. His creation of Quigley in Ballykissangel, justifying a lucrative franchise for confessionals containing fax machines on moral grounds, was funny because he somehow managed to show hypocrisy as something ludicrous, self-revealing and deeply human. His portrayal of Michael Moran, in the BBC adaptation of John McGahern’s Amongst Women, achieved the almost impossible feat of making us feel sympathy for a tyrannical patriarch who would otherwise have appeared merely a monster. It was a role that brought Doyle much deserved acclaim, including many major awards and nominations. He was about to star in a pilot for a series that had been specially written for him – McCready and Daughter. He would have been great in it; in Tony’s hands, a part didn’t look like acting. On film-sets, his presence assured stability and integrity. His friendship was hugely valued.
Tony Garnett writes: Some deaths are unsurprising, even expected. Tony Doyle’s was like a kick in the stomach. We were just doing the deal with his agent for his sixth outing as Brian Quigley, in Ballykissangel. Tony was the Jack Nicholson of British actors. A tough man to deal with – he knew his worth – but once done, the most consummate professional. However warm, convivial (and late) the night before, he was always on the set on time, spruce, bright-eyed and ready, without temperament or side. In an age when some young actors mistake tabloid celebrity for talent, his impeccable professional manners were an example. You didn’t mess with him. Who would want to? He always delivered. In the 1990s, I was a privileged colleague through three years of Between The Lines and five of Ballykissangel. The roles were very different, but his subtlety, quiet authority and tart comedy timing were the same. As the bent detective and Machiavellian fixer, Deakin, he was cold and cynical, a man who believed in nothing, but enjoyed life as a game of bluff and double bluff. As Quigley, the entrepreneurial fixer, he brought warmth and an understanding of human weakness to the character. Rarely can a villain have been so loved by so many. Quigley playing with his grandson are scenes of great tenderness. Tony was my kind of actor. Less was more, and you could never catch him doing it. He had presence. It will take a long time to fade.
Tony Doyle, actor, born 1942; died January 28 2000
This “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Doyle, Michael Anthony (‘Tony’) (1935–2000), actor, was born 21 July 1935 in Ballyfarnan, near Boyle, Co. Roscommon, youngest among four children of James Doyle, garda, and his wife Nora. His father was later stationed in Frenchpark, Co. Roscommon, and in the mid 1950s in Churchtown, Dublin. Tony was educated at Frenchpark national school and Belcamp College, Raheny, Dublin, before proceeding to St Patrick’s in Carlow to study philosophy and to UCD to study commerce. At college he became involved in the Dramatic Society and decided on the stage as a career. He spent time on the Dublin fringe, especially at the Pike Theatre, till a musical he was appearing in, James MacKenna’s ‘The scatterin’, transferred to London in 1962 and he decided to stay on. Although he lived principally in London for the rest of his life, work often took him to Ireland. His role as Fr Sheehy (who caused a furore by advising women to use contraception), in the long-running RTÉ soap opera ‘The Riordans’, made him a household face in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s.
Doyle was briefly back in Dublin in the early 1970s to take on part-management of the Eblana Theatre, in premises under the central bus station. In March 1971 he produced Tom Gallacher’s ‘Mr Joyce is leaving Paris’ for the Dublin theatre festival, but had to take to the stage half an hour into the first performance to announce an injunction against the play by the trustees of Joyce’s estate. The following year he had a television appearance in another play based on Joyce’s work, Hugh Leonard’s ‘Stephen D’ (BBC 1972) as Dedalus’s friend Cranly, and in 1973 he appeared with John Hurt in a Tom Gallacher play, ‘The only street’, at the Dublin theatre festival. In England he took leading parts in acclaimed new Irish plays including Hugh Leonard’s ‘Da’ (Islington, 1977) and Brian Friel’s ‘Translations’ (Hampstead Theatre Club, 1981), but he was not typecast as an Irish actor and appeared in Pinter’s ‘The birthday party’ (Shaw Theatre, January 1975) as the sinister gangster McCann. The Times (9 Jan. 1975) commended him as a ‘tense, immobile figure, occasionally springing a swift, economical gesture’. He became associated with brooding and bullying parts – as the Unnamed Irishman in Tom Murphy’s ‘The Gigli concert’, performed in the Gate (19 March 1991) before transferring to the Almeida, London, the following year, he was critically acclaimed for playing ‘a dangerous bully, whose fist is as clenched as his smile’ (Guardian, 9 Jan. 1992).
Doyle’s screen characters also carried frequent undertones of aggression and menace; he excelled at villains. In the BBC series ‘Crossfire’ (1988) he was a Provisional IRA chief and in Murder in Eden (1991) he was a publican with a drink problem, who had killed two people. For the BBC police serial ‘Between the lines’ (1992–4) he played the seemingly incorruptible John Deakin, who turns out to be the villain. This was a breakthrough role and finally brought Doyle widespread renown; for the last six years of his life he was among the most acclaimed and sought-after actors in Britain. In the hard-hitting ITV drama about prostitutes, ‘Band of gold’ (1995–6), he was George Ferguson, cleaning-business boss and another menacing figure. His portrayal of brooding, dangerous characters reached its apogee in ‘Amongst women’ (1998), a four-part BBC drama based on John McGahern‘s (qv) book, with Doyle as Moran, the tyrannical widower and war of independence veteran, who brings up his children in a climate of fear. The role is based on McGahern’s father, a Leitrim garda, whom Doyle’s father, stationed in the neighbouring county, had known; Doyle said that the culture was familiar to him. He brought intensity and vulnerability to the part, which won him an IFTA and a Monte Carlo TV Silver Nymph award and is generally considered his master role. His on-screen tough-guy persona was matched by his off-screen reputation – Tony Garnett called him ‘the Jack Nicholson of British actors. A tough man to deal with, but once done, the most consummate professional. You didn’t mess with him. Who would want to? He always delivered’ (Guardian, 29 Jan. 2000).
However, his best-known part was light-hearted. He was originally unimpressed by the ‘Ballykissangel’ script but (after pressure) agreed to take on the part of Brian Quigley, a brash, wheeler-dealer businessman. The heart-warming comedy, set in a fictional village in Co. Wicklow, was an unlikely success and ran from 1996 to 1999. Showcasing Doyle in a straight comic role, it proved his versatility as an actor.
Although primarily a small-screen actor, Doyle was, towards the end of his life, offered an increasing number of film roles and appeared in Louis Malle’s Damage (1992); in Pat O’Connor’s Circle of friends (1995); as the gangster godfather, Tom French, in Paddy Breathnach’s I went down (1997); and as the bitter trouble-stirring priest in the 1999 film A love divided (based on the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea boycott; see Seán Cloney (qv)). In 1998 he was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Film Institute of Ireland. Doyle, a workaholic who had worked consistently throughout his career, took a typically prosaic, modest attitude to his belated success: ‘I feel like a very old racehorse who’s suddenly found himself on his feet so long that he starts winning’ (Irish Times, 29 May 1999). His sudden death in London on 28 January 2000 came as a shock; he was due to begin filming a BBC drama, ‘McCready and daughter’. His remains were flown to Dublin and he was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, after removal from Terenure College chapel.
He married first (1967) Susan Courtney, they had a son and two daughters, one of whom, Susannah Doyle, followed him into acting. The marriage ended in divorce (1976). With his second wife, Sally, he had a daughter and two sons
Michael Gambon was born in Cabra, Dublin in 1940. His family moved to live in London when he was five. At the age of eighteen he went on to study at RADA. He made his preofessional debut in 1962 at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in “Othello”. He spent three years at the Old Vic and then joined the Birmington Repertory Company. In 1974 he had a huge success with “The Norman Conquests”. He made is fil debut in 1965 with Laurence Oliver and Maggie Smith in “Othello”. In 1986 he starred on television in Dennis Potter’s “The Singing Detective” to great acclaim. Among his films are “The Gambler”, “Dancing at Lughnasa” and “Sleepy Hollow” and the “Harry Potter” series where he took over from Richard Harris. 2013 article on Michael Gambon in “MailOnline” here.
TCM Overview:
One of the most respected and accomplished actors on stage, film and television since the 1960s, Sir Michael Gambon essayed men of complex passions, flaws and appetites in projects ranging from classical theater and “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover” (1989) to the “Harry Potter” franchise, where he replaced Richard Harris as the fatherly wizard Dumbledore
. An acolyte of Laurence Olivier, he honed his craft on the British stage in productions of plays by Samuel Beckett and Alan Ayckbourn; major theater awards precipitated celebrated turns on television in “The Singing Detective” (BBC1, 1986), which in turn launched a film career as dastards like his brutal gangster in “Thief” or men hobbled by regret in “Dancing in Lunghnasa” (1998).
Michael Gambon
Hits in Hollywood like “Sleepy Hollow” (1999) boosted his profile, which led to Emmy nominations for “The Path to War” (HBO, 2002) and “Emma” (BBC1, 2009) as well as steady work on stage and in front of the camera. While most moviegoers recognized him as Dumbledore, his vast and storied career displayed a breadth of talent that made him an actor worthy of his late mentor’s mantle of the world’s finest working actor.
Oliver MacGreevy was born in Dublin 1928. Virtually all of his acting career has been in the U.K. His first film was THe Scamp” in 1057. Other credits include “The Leather Boys”, “The Girl with Green Eyes”, “The Ipcress Files” and “Flash Gordon”. He retired in 1984. His “Wikipedia” entry can be accessed here.
Finbar Lynch began his career on the Dublin stage in the 1980’s. He played with Niall Toibin in “Mass Appeal” directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald. He went on then to be in the long running “Glenroe” on Irish television. He has since spent most of his career working in Britain. he had a major role on TV in “Small World”. He has featured in “Mind Games” and “To Kill A King”. Recently he has been on television in “Proof”. He is frequently on the stage in the West End. He is the long time partner of actress Niamh Cusack. To view article on Finbar Lynch, please click here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Lynch was born in Dublin, and at the age of 11, moved with his family to the village of Inverin, County Galway where his father ran a clothing factory under a scheme to encourage business investment in Gaeltacht areas. Lynch has 2 brothers.
Susannah Doyle was born in Kingston-on-Thames and is the daughter of the late Irish actor Tony Doyle. Her first film was “Scandal” in 1989. Her other credits include “Ablout a Boy” and “A Congregation of Ghosts”. She has featured in many of the more popular television drama’s e.g. “Lewis”, “Ballykissangel” and “Midsomer Murders”.
Peter Hanly was born in 1964 in Dublin. He is best known for his performance as Garda Ambrose Egan in the popular long running television series “Ballykissangel”. He has been featured in the movies “Braveheart”, “Guilttrip” and “My Boy Jack”. Interview with Peter Hanly here.
John Welsh was born in 1914 in Wexford. He has a very long list of film and television credits maninly in Britain. He usually played people in authority e.g. middle-ranking civil servants and also judges. His first film was in 1953 “Is’nt Life Wonderful”. Tall, latterly balding character actor with stage experience in both Ireland and England. He spent several seasons with the Gate Theatre in Dublin in the mid-1940’s. In England from 1950, including a spell with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Small roles in film, usually as well-bred authority figures, judges or professors. He enjoyed more substantial roles on the small screen, particularly in miniseries, such as ‘The Forsyte Saga’. His major film credits include “An Inspector Calls”, “The Divided Heart”, “Francis of Assisi” and “The Wild and the Willing”. His last film was the TV movie “Murder: By Reason of Insanity” in 1985, the year he died at the age of 70.
Cyril Cusack was one of the great Irish actors of theatre and film. He was born in 1910 in fact in South Africa where his parents who were actors were touring in a play. He joined the famed Abbey Theatre in 1932 where he remained until 1945. He acted in over sixty productions and became a particular exponent of the work of Sean O’Casey. He formed his own production company in 1947. His first film was as a child in the 1918 silent film “Knocknagow”. His film career highlights include “Odd Man Out”, “THe Small Back Room”, “Gone to Earth”, “The Rising of the Moon” and “True Confessions”. This film he made in the U.S. in 1981 with Robert De Niro and Robert DuVal. His last stage performance was just a few years before his death where he appeared in “Three Sisters” with his own daughters Sinead , Sorcha and Cusack. His other daughter Catherine Cusack is also an actress. Cyril Cusack died in London in 1993 at the age of 82
.His “Independent” obituary:
ALL that was ever meant by the Irish theatrical tradition in the 20th century was embodied in the life of Cyril Cusack. Soft-voiced, thin-lipped, small-built, fey or sinister, gentle or chilling, poetical, musical, rueful, shy, he was by nature a quietist.
Yet he waved the banner of Irish drama with a loud loyalty to his beloved forebears, Shaw, Boucicault, Synge, O’Casey. He was born abroad, in South Africa in 1910, to an Irish father who was serving in the mounted police, and a cockney mother. But no one learnt better to understand the value and the vicissitudes of Irish fit-ups, those roving companies that strayed from village to village on a once-nightly basis.
He was a boy when his mother’s partner, the Irish actor Brefni O’Rourke, whom he later came to regard as his father, took him on. Cusack graduated in his twenties to the Abbey, Dublin. He played in over 65 of its productions in the early Thirties. He formed his own troupe, the Gaelic Players; and just before the Second World War gave Londoners a taste of his quality.
Not in the West End, of course. But at the minuscule Mercury in Notting Hill Gate, and at the now vanished ‘Q’ on Kew Bridge. Fringe productions we might call them now, but they drew the leading critics of the day to The Playboy of the Western World and The Plough and the Stars.
Here was an actor to reckon with: a melancholic, mischievous, courteous and so arrestingly Celtic, so steeped in his authors, that his Christy Mahon in Synge’s masterpiece – brimming with naive, elfin charm – and his young Covey in O’Casey’s tragi-comedy – a bantam-cock of impertinence – tingled with life and fun and finely controlled expressiveness.
They were to become his best- known parts. He had been playing them for years in Ireland, but they lit up those small west London stages: and even when he made a reputation in other roles, as the dying Louis Dubedat for instance in The Doctor’s Dilemma which brought him into the West End a few years later opposite Vivien Leigh, it seemed as if something of the Covey and of the Playboy informed his characterisation.
He loved Shaw and Shavian parts, and it grieved him as much as it grieved his admirers when on St Patrick’s Day 1942, a fortnight after the opening of The Doctor’s Dilemma, his acting went, to say the least, disturbingly fuzzy. He started introducing into Shaw’s dialogue lines from The Playboy of the Western World – having ‘dried up’, it was the only part he knew he could speak in a crisis – and his mind went blank.
Vivien Leigh also became confused; and the curtain had to come down. Whatever the facts behind a legendary occasion – had Cusack made too much of St Patrick’s Day far from home as the Blitz proceeded? was the wartime whisky bad? had he also got his understudy drunk? – both actors were dismissed. Cusack returned to Dublin to run the Gaiety Theatre with plenty of Shaw, Synge and O’Casey, including the premiere of O’Casey’s The Bishop’s Bonfire (1955).
He played Hamlet. He created a stir in Paris with his production of The Playboy, and in 1960 he won the International Critics Award for his productions at the Theatre des Nations of Arms and the Man and Krapp’s Last Tape. He also worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the new National Theatre, but it was his acting as Conn in the Abbey’s revival of Boucicault’s The Shaughran in a World Theatre Season at the Aldwych which proved his main achievement at the time because it provoked a most profitable revival of British interest in Boucicault which was to last for decades.
Cusack served the Dublin Theatre Festival faithfully every autumn. If his own version of The Temptation of Mr O (from Kafka) brought out his whimsicality unduly, his Gayev in The Cherry Orchard was a real charmer: and Londoners were grateful to be able to see his famous Fluther Good in The Plough and the Stars, at the Olivier Theatre in 1974, and his wonderfully sly and insinuative style as The Inquisitor in Saint Joan.
Back at the Abbey in the 1980s he was as moving as he had ever been as the father in Hugh Leonard’s autobiographical A Life, especially at the end when he whirled his umbrella at the audience, smiled wanly and with infinite pathos strolled off stage.
He never ceased to make films either in Britain or Hollywood because he was by nature a reserved actor with a marvellous eye for the telling detail. He seemed to specialise in modest little men: thoughtful, repressed, fey clerks, drunks, priests, dreamers.
His starving boy by the roadside in his first film, Knocknagow (1917), is a collector’s item, but his screen personality insinuated itself more strikingly into the atmosphere of Odd Man Out (1947), The Man Who Never Was (1956), The Waltz of the Toreadors (1962), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Taming of the Shrew (1967), The Day of the Jackal (1973) and True Confessions (1981).
Small parts, of course, but apt to steal their scenes, though I never saw scenes more stirringly or comically stolen than at the Royal Court, in London, in 1990 in a transfer from The Gate, Dublin, of Adrian Noble’s staging of The Three Sisters.
Cusack was the last of the great Irish actor-managers and the father of a theatrical family, and the women of the title in The Three Sisters were played most affectingly by three of his talented children, Sorcha, Niamh and Sinead. But as the drunken army doctor Chebutykin, Cusack himself, with his asides and his sniffs, his murmurs and his stares, his timing, and his wry, ruminative smile, stole hearts with the subtlety and truth of his under-playing.
His “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
TCM overview:
Gifted Irish stage performer, born in South Africa who made his film debut in 1917’s “Knocknagow”, but did not come into his own as a strong screen character actor until 1947 with Carol Reed’s “Odd Man Out”. With his quirky features, playful authority and an elfin face that sometimes registers melancholy or stern morality, Cusack most often portrayed clerics (“My Left Foot” 1989) but in “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1965), he played the spy chief and in Truffaut’s “Fahrenheit 451” (1966), the book-burning fire chief. One of the most acclaimed stage actors of his generation, Cusack was famous for his association with Ireland’s national theater, the Abbey; he was at various times also affiliated with Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Cusack also performed on Broadway, as in the memorable 1957 staging of Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” in which he starred opposite Wendy Hiller. Active in theatre administration and production as well, he managed the Gaity Theater in Dublin for a while in the 1940s and founded his own Cyril Cusack Productions in 1944. He is the father of actresses Sinead, Niamh and Sorcha Cusack with whom he co-starred in the 1990 Gate Theater of Dublin’s production of “The Three Sisters”.
Jim Norton was born in Dublin in 1939. He is an acclaimed stage actor who has won a Tony on Broadway for “The Seafarer” and in 2009 starred as Finian McLorigan in the musical “Finian’s Rainbow”. He is well known as Bishop Len Brennan in the cult comedy TV series “Fr Ted”. His film roles include “Alfred the Great” in 1967 and “Memoirs of an Invisible Man” with Chevy Chase.
Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde had a simple formula for artistic success: “Start at the top and then sit on it.” It’s advice that the director and cast of Finian’s Rainbow have every reason to take to heart, because their highly anticipated revival at the Saint James Theatre on 44th Street is almost certain to become a smash hit.
In a lucky break that almost never happens on Broadway, this production had the critics raving before it officially opened. Back in March the show was first presented in a stripped down production at Manhattan’s City Center as part of their Encores! series, an annual program of classic musical revivals that’s been running since 1994. From its very first performance Finian’s Rainbow was, as they say, a monster hit.
Cheyenne Jackson, the smoldering all-American star of the show, tells Irish America, “I’ve been involved in a dozen of these fit ’em up revivals and every time there’s been terrific buzz about the show transferring to Broadway. But Finian’s Rainbow is the first show I’ve been in that actually has. And I can tell you I am thrilled to be a part of it.” For the show’s breakout star, Tony-winning Irish actor Jim Norton, it’s an opportunity to do something that he rarely can nowadays – work in a production that’s appropriate for his grandchildren to see.
“Because I’m always in shows like Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, my grandchildren have actually never seen me in a play,” Norton tells Irish America. “But this is something the whole family can see – including my own grandkids – because it’s appropriate for any age and it’s beautiful, voluptuous music.”
Resisting every temptation to play to Irish stereotype, Norton’s a marvel in the title role of Finian McLonergan, a lovable Irish rogue taking a shortcut to easy street. Onstage his unexpectedly subtle performance wisely lets the paternal bond between himself and his daughter Sharon (Kate Baldwin) become the emotional center of the show. The other actors have taken note, too.
“Jim’s performance, because it’s so truthful, has made all of us step up our game,” Baldwin tells Irish America. “Jim will only present you with what he knows will ring true. There’s no melancholy about Jim, his spirit has infused the cast and has made us all a little bit lighter about the material, so when it gets to the poignant parts you’re not mired in sappy stuff,” Baldwin adds.
If you haven’t seen it, it would be easy to assume that Finian’s Rainbow is a lethal dose of the sappy stuff from the 1940s. But ten minutes into this production you’ll realize that beneath its warmhearted exterior, Finian’s Rainbow is packing a social punch that’s as potent now as the day it was first produced over 60 years ago. (A celebrated 2004 revival of the show at the Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan won critical acclaim but didn’t make it to the Great White Way.)
The plot is famously convoluted: when Finian McLonergan emigrates from Ireland with his daughter Sharon and a stolen pot of leprechaun gold stowed away in his bag, we know that retribution is certain to follow. Sure enough, it arrives in the shape of Og, a lecherous young Irish leprechaun in green figure-hugging Spandex (Christopher Fitzgerald). Outraged by the theft, Og has followed father and daughter all the way from home, desperate to recover his stolen treasure before the loss of it turns him permanently human.
Alongside all the giddy theatrics, the show tackles an issue that’s all too real: what happens when a bigoted leader like Senator Billboard Rawkins takes control, enacting laws that are actually smokescreens for his racism. Unfortunately for him, he reveals his opinions to Sharon, who accidentally turns the old bigot into a black man when she curses him near a pot of magic gold. Onstage a bigoted white man is improved by making him black, a device that still resonates in these so-called post racial times.
“The show is a very strange and wonderful hybrid of plotlines,” Baldwin tells Irish America. “You have an economic storyline, you’ve got a racial storyline, you’ve got an immigrant storyline and you have all this leprechaun magic as well. So our director made sure that we had very distinct people in the cast, giving each plotline direction from moment to moment.”
Like her co-star Jackson, Baldwin has some Irish ancestry to draw from – and better yet, she’s actually spent time there. “I do have some Irish heritage and I went to Ireland in 1998 and had a really lovely time. To top that off I check in with Jim every day to ask him about my accent work and he’s so generous always, he lets me know if I go too far. He’s a great guide.”
The show’s English director, Warren Carlyle, an immigrant to these shores himself, finds he has a strong personal affinity for the two central characters. With eight West End hits to his credit, Carlyle still finds himself identifying with the journeys taken by Finian and Sharon, who upend their own lives, move to a new country, meet new people and start all over again.
The search for home and the rootlessness that takes over until you find it are the show’s central themes, and because of that there’s a tenderness in the way that Finian and his daughter are accepted by the people of Rainbow Valley that mirrors Carlyle’s own experience in New York. Both the material and the actors have gotten under his skin, he says. The show’s poignant score (written by Burton Lane and E.Y. Harburg, two gifted Jewish composers, as a sort of valentine to the Irish) is unforgettably moving too, a legacy shared between two wandering tribes. Norton seems to know this in his bones and he handles it delicately, giving the whole production an injection of smarts that lifts it to another level.
“Now these songs are so famous to us,” Carlyle tells Irish America. “We know, or we think we know, ‘Glocca Morra’ and ‘Look to the Rainbow’ and ‘That Old Devil Moon.’ But it was fascinating to watch the audiences at the City Center performances because there’s something powerful about them realizing that [the songs] all come from the same show. It’s one of the greatest scores ever written and frankly, it’s one of the greatest casts I’ve ever worked with. These actors come from all of these different backgrounds and places and yet they somehow unite in the telling of this story. That’s a very American thing, isn’t it?”
In theory a syrupy old ballad like “How Are Things in Glocca Morra” should have audiences reaching for an airbag, but in practice – thanks to Norton and Baldwin’s performances and English director Warren Carlyle’s guidance – it hits you square in the chest, bringing both delight and tears in equal measure.
“There are so many shows about Ireland that we can find a little offensive because of the manner in which they’re presented,” Norton tells Irish America. “But I think that this one is handled so delicately. My character is just looking for what we’re all looking for – a bit of peace and happiness. That’s really all of my focus through the show.” Norton admits that he was startled by the strength of the public’s reaction to the show during the Encores! performances. “It was unbelievable what happened. The last time we did this show it was all based on fear. We had less than ten days to rehearse it. Then we performed it at City Center and we were hit by this giant wave of affection. It was so exciting and great.”
Because this is a postwar Broadway musical it’s almost a given that all roads lead to the happiest of happy endings. In this magical section of the Deep South, an Irish family live with African American sharecroppers, they dance and sing with them, and good fellowship always wins out in the end.
For Norton the real danger of the show wasn’t the subject matter, it was finding the right tone to present his character in. “There’s always a danger that when you play a part like Finian, it can tilt toward the Darby O’Gill side of things. But I think we’re better than that, I think we’re brighter than that. What I try to do is to play the truth of the character because I find him deeply affecting. He’s a very gentle soul. His wife has died and he’s left with the responsibility of looking after his young daughter. Obviously he takes that responsibility very seriously, to find a better life. Back in 1947 it was a time when people did come to America from Ireland to do exactly that – looking for their pot of gold, for their dream to be realized. That guides me.”
For Cheyenne Jackson, the young man who has become the uncrowned king of Broadway since he first arrived on the scene in 2002, all that remains now is to get it right on the night. “This is my fifth or sixth Broadway show and you never know from the get-go what the outcome is going to be, but we all keep coming back to the word magic. As long as we don’t mess with it there’s going to be a nice niche for us on Broadway. A lot of people are going to discover and rediscover this show.”
Although Jackson is a square-jawed all-American poster boy, he also has Irish blood too, he says. “My dad is Irish. His father was too. He identifies heavily with that part of his heritage. Now I’m playing an Irish American and it’s not such a stretch in that sense.”
The “Irish America” can also be accessed online here.
Daragh O’Malley hails from Limerick city. He was born in 1954. His father was Donagh O’Malley a Minister of Education in the Irish Government who died suddenly in 1968. His mother Dr Hilda Moriarty was from Kerry and while in university had met the port Patrick Kavanah who wrote the famous “Raglan Road” about her. Daragh O’Malley’s most famous role is as Patrick Harper the loyal and tough ally of Sean Bean in the hughly popular TV series “Sharpe”. His first film role was in the terrific thriller “The Long Good Friday” in 1980. His other films include “Cal”, “Whitnail and I” and “Shaughnessy”. He has guest starred in most of the popular UK crime TV series such as “Wire in the Blood”, “Silent Witness” and “Waking the Dead”. His website here.
James Ellis was born in 1931 in Belfast. He studied at Queen’University, Belfast and then later at the Bristol Old Vic. From 1962 until 1978 he played Bert Lynch in the long running “Z Cars”. He has also appeared in “Ballykissangel” and “Only Fools and Horses”. His films include “Resurrection Man” and “Best”. Sadly, James Ellis died in March 2014.
His “Independent” obituary:
James Ellis was an actor and stage director, best known for his role as Bert Lynch, the longest-serving character in the cast of Z-Cars, the popular police television drama which ran for 16 years during the 1960s and ’70s. As the affable PC who rises to the rank of Inspector over the course of the series, he was the only member of the cast to appear in every one of the show’s 565 episodes.
Ellis was born in Belfast in 1931, the son of a shipyard worker. He studied at the city’s Methodist College, to which he won a scholarship, and Queen’s University, where he read English literature and French philosophy.
He studied drama at the Old Vic in Bristol before going on to join the Ulster Group Theatre in 1952. There he played a variety of roles, culminating as the lead character, Christy Mahon, in JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, and soon rose to director of productions, by 1959. However, a year later, when Ellis chose to direct Over the Bridge (1960), a production which dealt with the religious divide in Northern Ireland and which the Group Theatre considered too difficult a subject, he was obliged to resign.
The current Northern Ireland Culture Minister, Carál Ní Chuilín, said, “James was a man of great character and was never afraid to tackle difficult issues as we witnessed with his direction of Over The Bridge, at a time when many believed that sectarianism, which the play addressed, was too controversial for a stage performance.”
Ellis left for London, and controversy followed him. In September 1961 the BBC aired Stewart Love’s Randy Dandy, starring Ellis as a ship-worker who refused to strike. The channel had to prepend a warning to the broadcast, indicating that it would be “unsuitable for people of a nervous disposition”, the era’s code-phrase to signal a play’s overtly sexual content. But this, and his role earlier that year in Stewart Love’s The Sugar Cube (1961), brought him to the attention of the producers of a new drama series, then at the planning stage.
Z-Cars was a police drama centred on the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in Merseyside. Whereas Dixon of Dock Green was a slow-placed, genteel depiction of life in the force, Z-Cars took its name from the response vehicles used by this newer breed of policeman, in pursuit of the motley band of criminals in the area.
At audition Ellis recalled that he was told his character would be a certain PC McGinty. However, “I reminded them about [the traditional Irish song] Paddy McGinty’s Goat, and that villains would simply laugh at me,” he said, “so they changed my name to PC Lynch.” As Ellis’s role developed, he was promoted from PC to Inspector, gaining recognition and popularity with audiences as his stature in the unit increased.
Throughout his career, Ellis took pride in not changing his voice for the roles which he took on. “His was the first Belfast accent that people in the UK regularly heard in their lives – ever,” said James Nesbitt, who worked with Ellis. “This opened the gates for all kinds of accents after that. I have spoken to some of the actors who went across [to the mainland] and they said they looked at Jimmy Ellis and said, ‘If he can do it, we can do it’.”
Now working back in Northern Ireland, Ellis starred in Graham Reid’s Too Soon To Talk To Billy (1982), the first in a trio of “Billy” plays, which brought the authentic voice of working-class Ulster Protestants to television audiences as part of the BBC’s Play for Today series. Ellis played the bullying father, Norman Martin, alongside a young Kenneth Branagh, just out of Rada, in the title role.
Ellis experienced personal tragedy in 1988 when his son Adam was murdered while fishing on the Grand Union Canal in London. “I went berserk,” Ellis later said. “I wasn’t in possession of my senses. I kicked open the doors of every pub in the street shouting, ‘Who knows who murdered my son?'” Another son from his first marriage, Hugo, also an actor, committed suicide in 2011 at the age of 49.
Other television roles for Ellis included parts in Ballykissangel, Doctor Who, In Sickness And In Health and Only Fools And Horses. He received an honorary doctorate in 2008 from Queen’s University Belfast, in recognition for his services to the performing arts, as part of the university’s centenary celebrations.
In 2009 Radio 4 broadcast a series of five translations he made of French stories from the writings of the 16th century poet Pierre de Ronsard, adapted to Irish settings. “I became interested in him because he came to Scotland as a young page,” Ellis recalled, “and I have this insatiable curiosity about Scotland because Scottish history has always seemed so much more exotic to me than Irish history.”
Branagh said in tribute, “James Ellis was a great inspiration to me, and many other actors from the North of Ireland. I was blessed to begin my career working with him, and I will never forget his generosity to me. He was a highly intelligent, funny, and kind man, and a tremendous actor.”
His Independent obituary can also be accessed here.
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Ellis, James (‘Jimmy’) (1931–2014), actor and theatre director, was born on 15 March 1931 in his aunt’s house at 13 Gawn Street, Belfast, the younger of two children and only son of James Ellis senior, a sheet-metal worker at Harland & Wolff shipyard, and his mother Matilda (‘Tilly’), a mill worker. The family briefly lived in Birkenhead near Liverpool when Ellis’s father was worked at Cammel Laird’s shipyard. They returned to Belfast in 1939 to live at 30 Park Avenue. To supplement the family income, they took in lodgers, some of whom Ellis recalled in a poetry anthology, ‘Portrait of a house’, that remained unpublished until produced as a stage play by the Blunt Fringe Theatre Company in 2018. From September 1939 Ellis attended Strand Public Elementary School in Sydenham and in 1943 he won a city scholarship to attend ‘Methody’ (Methodist College Belfast). The school gave him his first taste for acting when he took part in the dramatic society’s performance of ‘The Barretts of Wimpole Street’ in 1949.
At the age of eighteen Ellis won a scholarship to QUB where he read English literature and French. He proved a poor student but gained acting experience with Queen’s Dramatic Society where he took part in their production of George Bernard Shaw’s (qv) ‘Candida’. This was followed by some work with Hubert Wilmot’s recently opened Arts Theatre where he was paid £3 per week. His acting commitments took precedence over his studies and in 1951 he lost his QUB scholarship. This, however, opened the door for him to apply for and receive the Tyrone Guthrie (qv) scholarship, enabling him to attend the Bristol Old Vic school where he learned stage management and directed a performance of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The cocktail party’.
On his return to Belfast, he appeared in Tennessee Williams’s ‘The glass menagerie’, directed by Hubert Wilmot for which he was paid £11 per week. During the production, he met Elizabeth (‘Betty’) Hogg, whom he later married. On rejoining the Arts Theatre’s regular company, Ellis was offered a wage of £2 per week by Wilmot, who claimed he would have to re-teach him everything he knew. An outraged Ellis approached Harold Goldblatt (qv), director of the Ulster Group Theatre, where he was warmly received and offered £3 per week with the additional assurance there would be no menial backstage tasks. Ellis accepted, and from 1952 regularly played the male lead role in Group Theatre plays such as ‘April in Assagh’ (1954), ‘Is the priest at home?’ (1954), ‘The diary of Anne Frank’ (1957), and his most significant role as Christy Mahon in J. M. Synge’s (qv) ‘The playboy of the western world’ (1957). Although there were lulls in his fortunes – at one stage he and Betty moved to London where Ellis sold ladies’ shoes in Selfridges department store – by 1959 he was artistic director of the Group Theatre and in a position to make one of the most crucial decisions of his career. In his memoir (published posthumously in 2015), he recalled being stopped on the street early in March 1959 by the playwright Samuel Thompson (qv) who thrust a manuscript at him with the words: ‘I have a play here you won’t touch with a bargepole’ (Troubles, 25). That evening Ellis gave the play to his father, who was deeply impressed by its gritty realism and insisted that his son do it. The play, ‘Over the bridge’, based on Thompson’s experience of sectarian division in Harland & Wolff, was however considered too inflammatory by the Group Theatre’s board of directors, who believed it could lead to civil unrest, and they refused to stage it. In protest, Ellis offered his resignation but agreed to stay on to complete the theatre’s dual programme with Bangor Borough Council until September – he was upset at later suggestions that he and the cast walked out immediately en masse. Once his commitments were discharged, he and most of the production team left the Group Theatre to form Ulster Bridge Productions. Ellis approached Frank Reynolds, manager of the Belfast Empire Theatre in Victoria Square, and he agreed to stage it. The play opened on 26 January 1960, received glowing reviews, and played to an estimated 42,000 people during its six-week run.
Despite the success of ‘Over the bridge’, Ellis subsequently found it hard to get work in Belfast. In 1961 he again moved to London, where he was embroiled in controversy when he played the part of Dandy Jordan in BBC television’s 1961 production of Stewart Love’s Randy Dandy – a play so sexually charged it was deemed ‘unsuitable for people of a nervous disposition’ by the continuity presenter when it aired on 14 September. His performance was well received, however, and led to his big break into television. One of the play’s directors was working on a new police drama, Z-Cars, and when Donal Donnelly (qv) turned down the part of ‘PC McGinty’, the director suggested that Ellis might be suitable. Ellis, who readily accepted the offer, was quick to remind the producers of the well-known traditional song ‘Paddy McGinty’s goat’ and suggested a name-change. He also refused to abandon his Belfast accent, lending his character a much-vaunted authenticity. The newly named PC Bert Lynch went on to become an enduring figure in British television – during its run from 1962 to 1978, Ellis was the only cast member to appear in all 627 episodes and, at its peak, Z-Cars attracted eighteen million viewers, including Queen Elizabeth.
Despite professional success, Ellis faced mounting personal problems during that period. He and Betty Hogg divorced in 1967, and in 1974 he appeared in the London bankruptcy court with debts of more than £12,000 in unpaid income tax. He also faced career uncertainty in 1978 with the end of Z-Cars, owing to his close association with the character of Bert Lynch. However, that changed when he appeared in Graham Reid’s BBC trilogy of ‘Billy’ plays, Too late to talk to Billy (1982), A matter of choice for Billy(1983) and A coming to terms for Billy (1984). The plays were widely praised for their authentic portrayal of the Belfast protestant working-class, and for bringing this group to the attention of a cross-channel audience. Ellis played Norman Martin, the father of the young Billy of the title (played by Kenneth Branagh), a heavy drinker and hard, violent man who had a stormy relationship with his son. It was a part far removed from the affable Bert Lynch, and opened Ellis’s way to more varied and demanding roles.
From the late 1980s, he appeared regularly in popular television series such as Doctor Who (1989), Nightingales (1990–93), In sickness and in health (1992) and Ballykissangel (1998–9). He also had cameos in series such as Boys from the blackstuff, Only fools and horses, The Bill, Casualty and Lovejoy. His films roles included appearances in No surrender (1985), Priest (1994) and Resurrection man (1998). Outside of acting he had a fascination with sixteenth-century French poet Pierre de Ronsard, whose work he had been introduced to by one of his masters in ‘Methody’. From the early 1970s he began translating de Ronsard’s poetry and in 2009 BBC Radio 4 broadcast a series of five of his translations, adapted to Irish settings. He made several visits to de Ronsard’s birthplace and was made an honorary member of the Ronsard Society in France. In addition, he wrote his own verse – Domestic flight was published in 1998 – and a book of short stories entitled Home and away (2001). In 2001 he was the subject of the Thames Television programme This is your life when surprised during rehearsals for ‘Playboy of the western world’ at the National Theatre in London on the silver wedding anniversary of his marriage to his second wife, Robina. Other recognition included the award of an honorary doctorate in July 2008 by QUB as part of its centenary celebrations and a lifetime achievement award by the Belfast Film Festival in 2012.
Later in life Ellis suffered great personal tragedy when predeceased by his two sons from his first marriage: Adam was murdered in London in 1988 and Hugo, an actor and director, died by suicide in 2011. James Ellis died on 8 March 2014 in Lincoln, England. The funeral service was held in St Mark’s Church, Dundela, East Belfast, and he was interred in Castlereagh presbyterian churchyard. His headstone is engraved with two lines from one of his own poems: ‘The hills of Antrim etched upon my heart. For truth to tell, I never really left’ (Ellis, ‘Over the bridge’). Among the many who attended his funeral were fellow actors and friends James Nesbitt, Adrian Dunbar and Kenneth Branagh, all of whom paid tribute to him as an inspirational figure. Nesbitt noted that actors in Northern Ireland ‘looked at Jimmy Ellis and said, “if he can do it, we can do it”’ (Independent, 11 Mar. 2014). In March 2017 the James Ellis Bridge between C. S. Lewis Square and Victoria Park was named in his honour, and plaques were erected at his family home on Park Avenue and at the two schools he attended. In 2019 ‘Over the bridge’ was staged at the Linen Hall Library, Belfast, to commemorate sixty years since Ellis first brought it to a local audience, and in March 2021 there were a series of online events to commemorate what would have been his ninetieth birthday. His archive is held by National Museums Northern Ireland
Sean Caffrey was a very talented Irish actor who made his mark in British television and in film. He was born in 1940 in Belfast. He starred in most of the major programmes including “Z Cars”, “The Professionals”, “Coronation Street”. His films include the cult classic “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” and the beautiful, lyrical West of Ireland.
“The Times” obituary from 2013:
Sean Caffrey briefly enjoyed film stardom in the 1960s, appearing opposite Sarah Miles in I Was Happy Here and Francesca Annis in Run With the Wind (both 1966). He then had leading roles in Hammer’s The Viking Queen (1967) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970). Subsequently, however, he divided his time between supporting roles in films and television, writing for and acting in theatre and developing a business that included designing men’s ties, along with his life partner Phil Thompson, on the Mediterranean island of Gozo.
In the 1980s Caffrey appeared in two acclaimed political thriller series on television, Harry’s Game (1982) and Edge of Darkness (1985). He later returned to Northern Ireland, where he was born and grew up, and he and Thompson co-founded the North Face Theatre Company. The company staged several plays written by Caffrey.
Born James Caffrey into a working-class Protestant family in east Belfast in 1940, he showed artistic flair from an early age, studied at Queen’s University in Belfast, acted in amateur drama and then graduated to professional theatre.
Strikingly handsome as a young man, Caffrey got his big break when he was cast as Paddy, a young Irishman newly arrived in London, in Patrick Galvin’s 1965 BBC drama Boy in the Smoke.
He was then cast opposite Sarah Miles in I Was Happy Here and Francesca Annis in Run With the Wind (both 1966). Both films have him involved in rather complicated romantic relationships. Things were relatively straightforward in The Viking Queen and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, but neither did much to stretch him as an actor or advance his career.
Caffrey had recurring roles in the police drama series No Hiding Place (1967), playing Detective Sergeant Gregg in 14 episodes, and briefly in Coronation Street (1968), as the escaped convict Frank Riley, who broke into Ken Barlow’s home and held his wife Valerie prisoner until she managed to tap out an SOS on the pipes to Ena Sharples.
Caffrey split his time between his business interests and acting, appearing in theatre and making a string of guest appearances on British television series, including several roles on Z Cars (1968-73), as well having as parts in The Brothers (1974), The Professionals (1979), Minder (1980) and Bergerac (1981, 1989).
He earned his place in Doctor Who lore as the ill-fated Lord Palmerdale in Horror of Fang Rock (1977), a spooky story, set at the beginning of the 20th century, with the survivors of a shipwreck taking refuge in a lonely lighthouse, only to discover that the worst is still to come. He had a major supporting role as Inspector Howard Rennie in Harry’s Game, the classic television thriller set during the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland.
After moving back to Northern Ireland, Caffrey worked largely in theatre and acted in a wide range of plays, including Loot, Macbeth and Sam Thompson’s Over the Bridge. In the late 1990s and 2000s he spent much of his time working as an actor and writer with his own North Face theatre company.
His work at North Face included the monologue Out Come the Bastards (1999), which focused on a sectarian killer writing his memoirs in prison. The Irish Times said it was “mesmerising theatre (that) rattles the skull and destroys all those lateral bigoted thoughts you might have had… It reveals an extraordinary antihero who bares his chest in his shitty blanket-protect and shows us all the horrible sides of human depravity. Is there any identification with this madman? Yes there is.”
Caffrey also continued acting in films and television and had supporting roles in the films Resurrection Man and Divorcing Jack (both 1998). His career was curtailed by ill health and his last stage appearance was in John Bull’s Other Island at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in 2004. He died in 2013.
His obituary from The Stage:
Sean Caffrey was part of a generation of actors that came out of Northern Ireland in the 1960s to find prominence on British television.
He made his small-screen debut in Boy in the Smoke in 1965, and capitalised on the impact he made the following year in Redcap by joining the long-running No Hiding Place in its tenth series in 1967.
A familiar television face, he appeared in episodes of Coronation Street, Z Cars, Softly Softly – Task Force, The Brothers, Dr Who, Minder, Harry’s Game, Edge of Darkness and Bergerac, among other programmes. His film credits included Run With the Wind alongside Francesca Annis and I Was Happy Here opposite Sarah Miles and Cyril Cusack (both 1966), Ascendancy (1983), Resurrection Man, Crossmaheart and Divorcing Jack (all 1998).
On stage, Caffrey appeared in The Creeper (Ashcroft Theatre, Croydon, 1969), Brendan Behan’s The Hostage (Greenwich Theatre, 1970), opposite Alfred Marks in How the Other Half Lives (Churchill Theatre, Bromley, 1978), Peter Sheridan’s The Liberty Suit (Project Arts Centre, Dublin, and Royal Court, 1980), and Loot and Macbeth (Bristol Old Vic, 1987).
A long relationship with Belfast’s Lyric Theatre included Stewart Parker’s Spokesong (1989), Graham Reid’s Lengthening Shadows (1995), Bill Morrison’s Drive On! (1996) and Gary Mitchell’s Marching On (2000).
Caffrey was also an adept set designer and sometime writer, most notably with his own one-man play Nora Surrender, based on his staunchly Protestant mother, which was seen at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1989. In the early 1990s, he ran an acting for television course at Ealing College, London.
Sean Caffery
Sean Caffrey was born on April 15, 1940, in the Loyalist heartland of east Belfast. He died ten days after his 73rd birthday on April 25.
Actor Sean Caffrey, who has died aged 73, had one of those instantly recognisable faces, even if you struggled at times to remember his name. Caffrey, born in Belfast in 1940, had a busy career on stage and in films but never quite made the big time. Sean remained a largely unsung professional, who was always in demand. By the time Caffrey was 30, his best years were behind him — and yet it had all begun with so much promise. Sean was chosen out of the blue in 1965 to play Paddy, a lonely Irish youth just arrived in London in the TV drama Boy In The Smoke, which earned him rave reviews.
And, that same year, he had a major role opposite stars Sarah Miles and Cyril Cusack in the film I Was Happy Here. By the time he was picked to play opposite the young and beautiful Francesca Annis in the movie Run With The Wind, Hollywood seemed only a plane ride away.
But it didn’t work out that way and Caffrey contented himself with minor, but important, roles in the likes of Coronation Street, Dr Who, Z-Cars and Minder. Back in his native Belfast, he appeared at the Lyric Theatre in 1997 in Brian Moore’s The Feast Of Lupercal and his last appearance back home was in 2004 in George Bernard Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island.
Marin Sheen was born in 1940 in Dayton, Ohio. He first came to public attention in the brilliant “Badlands”. His other major film credits include “Da”, “Catholics”, “Gettysburg”, “Apocalypse Now” and “Wall Street”. He had a major success with the long running “The West Wing”. Marftin Sheen is a well-known and respected activist. He is the father of actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. He is an Irish citizen.
TCM Overview:
One of the busiest, most conscientious actors who ever worked in Hollywood, Martin Sheen put together a Herculean body of work – though much of it forgettable – that contained enough highlights to consider him to be among the great actors of his generation. After establishing himself as a youth run amok, most notably in “Badlands” (1973), Sheen grew over the years into a patriarchal figure whose rectitude and social responsibility kept with his liberal Catholic activism. A proud family man who saw all four children enter the acting business, with sons Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen enjoying lucrative careers of their own, he was perhaps most noted for his performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s storied “Apocalypse Now” (1979), on which he suffered a near-fatal heart attack while seen onscreen in a drunken, unscripted meltdown the director incorporated into the finished product. But he subdued his rebellious ways with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, while putting his political activism to the fore with an enduring portrayal of an idealistic president on “The West Wing” (NBC, 1999-2006), which allowed him to put his two greatest passions – acting and activism – on full display. …
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Ardal O’Hanlon was born in 1965 in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan. He is the son of the politican Dr Rory O’Hanlon. While studying in college in Dublin, he began to do stand-up comedy. He was spotted by Graham Linehan who cast him as the innocent Fr Dougal McGuire in the iconic “Fr Ted” with Dermot Morgan as the lead character, Pauline McLynn as the housekeeper Mrs Doyle and Frank Kelly as the cranky Fr Jack Hackett. The series ran from 1995 until 1998. In 2000, he starred in the comedy series “My Hero”. On film, he had a featured role in Neil Jordan’s “The Butcher Boy”. Interview in “Irish Central” with Ardal O’Hanlon here.
Marie Mullen was one of the found members of the Druid Theatre Compan y of Galway along with Garry Hynes and the late Mick Lally. She and her husband Sean McGinley have acted in many of the Druid productions over the years and in 1998 she won a Tony for Best Actress for “The Beuty Queen of Leenane”. Her films include “Hear My Song” in 1991, “Circle of Friends” and “The Van”. Her page on “The Agency” can be accessed here.
Marianne Faithful has had a career in music that spans 45 years. She has on occasion acted in film. She was born in Hampstead, London in 1946. She began singing in London coffee houses and had a major hit with her first recording “As Tears Go By”. Her relationship with Mick Jagger is reflected in song of the Rolling Stone’s songs including “Sympathy for the Devil”. Her film debut came in 1967 with “I’ll Never Forget What’s His Name” and then in 1968 she starred with Alain Delon in “Girl on a Motorcycle”. She was Ophelia in “Hamlet” with Nicol Williamson. She thne seemed to concentrate on her recording career with occasional acting appearances on television. Her next film came in 1995 with “Moondance”. Marianne Faithful has lived in Ireland for many years. Her website can be accessed here.
Peter MacDonald was born in Dublin in 1972. He is the son of the cookery writer Brenda Costigan. He made his film debut in 1009 with “I Went Down”. Other films include “Felicia’s Journey”, “When Brendan Met Trudy” and “Saltwater”. Interview with Peter McDonald in “M Movies.ie” here.
Marjorie Steele has had a very interesting life. She was born in Reno, Nevada in 1930. She moved with her parents to live in San Francisco When she was just nineteen years of age she married the multimillionaire Huntington Hartford. She made just four films.
She first exhibited at The Brown Thomas Gallery in Dublin in 1970 and soon cultivated a reputation as one of “the foremost exponents of traditional sculpture in Ireland achieving an authentic, formal likeness in the treatment of her subjects”. (Myles Campbell, Sculpture 1600-2000, 2014)
In 1949 she was in “Hello Out There” followed by “Tough Assignment”, “Face to Face” and in 1953 “No Escape”.
After her divorce from Hartford, she married the British actor Dudley Sutton and then she married the Irish write Constantine Fitzgibbon and she came to live in Ireland. In the past few years, Marjorie Steel has concentrated on her painting. Article about Marjorie Steele and Huntington Hartford can be accessed here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Pert blonde actress Marjorie Steele was in films for a very short time, making only four in all. She was born in Reno, Nevada on August 27, 1930 in a log cabin built by her father, a contractor. Her mother was part Russian and Swedish while her father came from German and Sioux Indian parentage. Marjorie’s family moved to San Francisco when she was 9. It was here that she took an interest in acting while still young. She started with acting lessons and eventually won a scholarship to the Actors Lab in Hollywood. To support herself in the early days, she worked as a cigarette girl at Ciro’s, L.A.’s top nightclub. In what was to become a Cinderella story, the working teenager attracted the attention of multimillionaire Huntington Hartford.
Smitten by her, Hartford not only signed her to a contract with a motion picture company he owned, he married her in 1949–shortly after her nineteenth birthday. She built up her reputation on stage and appeared in two films produced by her husband: Hello Out There (1949) and Face to Face(1952). Her other two “B” films were Tough Assignment (1949) and No Escape (1953).
Marjorie scored well in theater assignments, notably as the title role in “Sabrina Fair” in 1954, which played in London, and on Broadway when she took over the role of Maggie the Cat from Barbara Bel Geddes in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Shortly after this, she suddenly lost interest in her career and decided to retire and raise a family.
She married British actor Dudley Sutton following her 1961 divorce to Hartford, but the marriage lasted only a few years.
Her third husband was author Constantine FitzGibbon, who wrote “When the Kissing Had to Stop” and “The Irish in Ireland,” and was the biographer of friend Dylan Thomas. Together the couple wrote “Teddy in the Tree.” He died in 1983. Living in Ireland, Marjorie occupied her later years with painting and sculpting and has been commissioned for her work.
American actress Marjorie Steele (later Fitzgibbon, 1930 – 2018) with her fiancé, British actor Dudley Sutton (1933 – 2018), on October 20th, 1961. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)American businessman Huntingdon Hartford (1911 – 2008) with his wife, actress Marjorie Steele in London, circa 1955. The couple were divorced in 1960. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Marjorie Steele obituary in “The Irish Times” in 2018.
Artist Dr Marjorie Steele-FitzGibbon, an American-born and naturalised Irish citizen, enjoyed success in three creative professions: Hollywood film star, stage actor, and artist in both painting and sculpture. She married three times and was the mother of four children and one step-child. Such a remarkable profile had at its root the drive that convinced her that “she could walk through walls”.
She was the second-eldest of four daughters of her second-generation Swedish immigrant mother, Ora, and salesman father, Jack Steele, whose mother was a native American. Her rise from humble origins living in “an honest-to-God log cabin” in Reno, Nevada, to Hollywood fame and marriage to a millionaire and subsequent marriages to an English actor of film and stage, and an Irish-American writer, is the stuff of romantic fiction. Yet her talents, striking beauty and sheer grit did not shield her from domestic tragedy, premature deaths and an inherited temperamental imbalance, all of which she faced with integrity and courage.
When she was 18 years old, Marjorie Steele, dressed in homemade yet elegant clothes, left her then home in a poor suburb of San Francisco with all that drive and confidence of youth and headed for Los Angeles. There her creativity found direction and opportunity: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for painting, and the Actors Lab for stage-craft, where she won a scholarship.
She also took a part-time job as a cigarette girl in Ciro’s Nightclub on Sunset Strip where a regular patron, the multimillionaire film-producer playboy Huntington Hartford, was dazzled by her fresh beauty amid all the glitz. Much to the chagrin of his date, film actress Lana Turner, he bought all her cigarettes – although he didn’t even smoke. They married a year later, in 1949, she an impressionable 19-year-old – “she was mad for him” – he an older, more worldly-wise thirty-nine. The “Cinderella wedding” offered rich pickings to the paparazzi and provoked snide comments by the art critics as Marjorie rose from acclaimed stage-actress in Tennessee Williams’s New York production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) to movie star. When on tour with a mixed-race crew Marjorie challenged Actors’ Equity to change a racially biased law regarding separate accommodation by defying the ban herself.
She also took a part-time job as a cigarette girl in Ciro’s Nightclub on Sunset Strip where a regular patron, the multimillionaire film-producer playboy Huntington Hartford, was dazzled by her fresh beauty amid all the glitz. Much to the chagrin of his date, film actress Lana Turner, he bought all her cigarettes – although he didn’t even smoke. They married a year later, in 1949, she an impressionable 19-year-old – “she was mad for him” – he an older, more worldly-wise thirty-nine. The “Cinderella wedding” offered rich pickings to the paparazzi and provoked snide comments by the art critics as Marjorie rose from acclaimed stage-actress in Tennessee Williams’s New York production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) to movie star. When on tour with a mixed-race crew Marjorie challenged Actors’ Equity to change a racially biased law regarding separate accommodation by defying the ban herself.
The glamorous couple played host to Hollywood celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood, yet Marjorie confided that while they were “all very interesting, they were just people”. Influenced by his artist wife, “Hart” channelled his wealth into promoting the arts by establishing an arts colony near Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.
Marjorie relocated her parents to an impressive ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains; yet, despite his dream come true, her father took his own life, an act which had repercussions for his family.
The marriage lasted seven years until Marjorie filed for divorce, when Huntington’s old, philandering ways resurfaced. They had two children, John and Catherine. The drug-related death of her daughter at 28 was a profound sorrow for Marjorie. She always acknowledged her love for “Hart” and her indebtedness to him for educating her and encouraging her creativity. They divorced in 1960.
Through “the best divorce lawyer”, Marjorie met her second husband, the handsome actor of television and film fame, Dudley Sutton – the gay biker in Leatherboys (1964) – with whom she had a whirlwind romance. They married in 1961, entailing Marjorie’s renunciation of her considerable alimony. They had a son, Peter, with whom Marjorie later lived until being hospitalised in 2017. Marjorie, no longer acting, socialised with many of his famous theatrical colleagues such as Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, John Hurt and the director Joan Littlewood.
Marjorie went for rehabilitation to an exclusive London health farm and there she met another housemate and fellow American, Constantine Fitzgibbon, the former husband of the food writer Theodora Fitzgibbon. Constantine’s brilliant mind captivated her. Summing up her previous romantic life, Marjorie described herself as “a self-destructive fool”.
Another divorce and marriage ensued. Marjorie was Constantine’s fourth and last wife and he her third husband. Constantine was a writer of Anglo-Irish extraction. They had a daughter, Oonagh. He also adopted Marjorie’s son, Peter. After a short spell in west Cork, the family lived in Killiney in south Co Dublin, and then in the city.2
Honeymooning in Greece ,the stunning classical sculptures there were the catalyst that drew her into sculpture and prompted her to wonder why she had wasted so much time working in two dimensions. Thus began a prolific period of artistic renewal which her great friend Micheál Mac Liammóir, describing her many sculpted heads of Irish literati, said: “Ms Fitzgibbon was born to do what she had done; fill the room with uncannily living persons.”
Her public works beloved of Dubliners include her iconic, larger-than-life-size statue of James Joyce in North Earl Street and a bust of the author in St Stephen’s Green facing Joyce’s alma mater, Newman House. Visitors to RTÉ are reminded of the charismatic presenter Eamon Andrews by her life-size statue in the foyer.
Dr Marjorie Steele-Fitzgibbon is survived by her daughter, Oonagh Brault, sons Jack and Peter Fitzgibbon, step-son Francis Fitzgibbon, grandchildren Hannagh and Niamh Jacobsen, and her ex-husband Dudley Sutton.
Eddie Byrne was an Irish actor who was born in Dublin in 1911. His film career was mainly in British films and includes “The Divided Heart”, “Rooney” and “The Punch and Judy Man”. He also featured in “Star Wars”. He died in Dublin in 1981. His daughter is the actress Catherine Byrne.
Anita Reeves is a talented Irish actress who has acted mostly on stage. She was part of the original cast of Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa”. She has worked intermittingly on film and television. She featured in William Trevor’s “The Ballroom of Romance” as Cat Bolger. Her scenes with Brenda Fricker and Ingrid Craigie in the ladies clockroom in the dance hall are among the best in the film. She has also appeared in “The Butcher Boy” and “Adam and Paul”. Her profile at “The Abbey Theatre” webpage can be accessed here. Anita Reeves died in 2016.
“Irish Examiner” article from 2014:
By Colette Sheridan
ANITA Reeves, who stars in a new production of the hit play Little Gem, jokes that she has been threatening to retire from her stage career for 20 years. The 66-year-old actor and singer, who is reprising her role as the grandmother in Elaine Murphy’s play about three generations of Dublin women, says she was never ambitious.
“But I have had an amazing career,” she reflects. “I have always done what I wanted to do. Once I settled down and had a family, they became the important thing for me. I still managed to work away quite a lot. I was very lucky to have a supportive sister who minded the children while I was away. They travelled with me as much as they could, but when they got to an age where they couldn’t do that, I stopped travelling so much.” Reeves is married to Julian Erskine, the executive producer of Riverdance. Their son, Danny, is stage manager of the Riverdance touring company and is currently working on the show in China. Daughter, Gemma, had a burgeoning career as an actor but decided it wasn’t for her and returned to college where she is studying psychology. “To be honest, I was kind of relieved when Gemma left acting. I wasn’t aware that I had that anxiety. It’s because it’s a much harder business for younger people compared to when I started. It’s very competitive now.”
As a child, Reeves was taken by her parents to plays and pantomimes. “I remember thinking I wanted to be on stage. My first job was in a pantomime in a tiny theatre in Dun Laoghaire. I went on to do two pantomimes with Eamon Morrissey at the Gaiety. One year, Maureen Potter was ill and she kindly suggested that I take over from her. We became very good friends and she was a huge influence on me. I adored her. The most valuable lesson I learned from Maureen was to connect with the audience and feel they’re your friends. A lot of actors are terrified of audiences. But I believe they wish you the best.”
Career highlights include Les Miserables at the former Point Depot where Reeves played the wife of the innkeeper, played by John Kavanagh. Reeves was in the original production of Dancing at Lughnasa and also played Juno in Juno and the Paycock at the Gaiety, over 20 years ago. It was directed by Joe Dowling who will again direct Reeves in the same role next May in the theatre he runs in Minneapolis. The production will mark the end of Dowling’s 20-year stint there. Little Gem has been good for Reeves. The play, which deals with momentous events in the lives of the grandmother, her daughter (Hilda Fay) and her granddaughter (Kate Gilmore) is directed by the author of the play. Following its debut at the Dublin Fringe, the play won the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award in 2009. The prize was a four-week run in an off-Broadway Theatre with all expenses paid. It also played in Australia and Tasmania.
Reeves admits that she feared the play wouldn’t be fully understood abroad as it’s written in a northside Dublin idiom. “When we were in New York, we were terrified that the audience wouldn’t respond to it. But they did. It’s a family story that is universal. There’s all the tensions and the events such as marriages, births and deaths.”
The above “Irish Examiner” article can also be accessed online here
Obituary from “The Guardian” by Michael Coveney in 2016.
Speeches were made from every stage in Dublin on the night Anita Reeves died of cancer, aged 68, a mark of the popular affection in which the actor was held. Small, vivacious and red-haired, she was as much a musical theatre star as she was a leading exponent of Seán O’Casey and Brian Friel. And when she played the long-deceased adoptive mother in Hugh Leonard’s autobiographical Da, the author said she was the closest to the real-life Maggie Tynan as anyone had ever been in the role.
The youngest daughter of Jack Reeves, a sergeant in the Dublin police force, and his wife, Kay, Anita was educated at St Louis high school, Rathmines, and trained as an actor for four years at the Brendan Smith Academy in Dublin, having worked briefly as a vet’s assistant and in an old people’s care home. She appeared as a principal boy in pantomime in a small theatre in Dún Laoghaire owned by the gas company, several pantomimes at the Gaiety with Eamon Morrissey and, in 1966, in a mass pageant of students celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Croke Park, hallowed home of Gaelic football.
She became a favourite in the Dublin revues of the mid-1960s, many of them written and produced by Fergus Linehan and also starring his wife Rosaleen Linehan. This prepared her for such later triumphs as Mme Thénardier in the Dublin premiere of Les Misérables in 1993, or a bewitching Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd at the Gate in Dublin in 2007. She chilled the audience’s collective marrow, too, in a musical moment in Joe Dowling’s 2012 production of James Joyce’s The Dead, adapted for the stage by Frank McGuinness, at the Abbey.
Dowling had first directed Reeves in the Irish premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular at the Gate in 1974 and, although she had many successes at both the Abbey and the Gate, she remained a non-aligned employee. She was a quintessentially Dublin actor, and defied all other categories. Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), first directed by Patrick Mason, is Friel’s magical, mystical memory play about his mother and aunts during the long hot summer of 1936, and Reeves embodied the spirit and tenacity of those “five Glenties women” as Maggie, the good-natured family clown; the scene of them all dancing around the kitchen is securely lodged in Irish theatre folklore.
The play came to the National Theatre in London and transferred to the West End. Over the following five years, Reeves revisited the West End in two Dowling productions of O’Casey political classics: in the Gate revival of Juno and the Paycock at Wyndham’s in 1993 (with Niall Buggy and Mark Lambert), she was surely the definitive Juno Boyle; and in a touring revival of The Plough and the Stars at the Garrick in 1995 she was revealed in bustling, comical form as Jinnie Grogan the charwoman, lamenting her marriage while excavating ear wax.
She adorned one of Nicholas Hytner’s first productions as artistic director of the National Theatre in London when, with Dearbhla Molloy, she played one of the chatty aunts in the grocery store in Martin McDonagh’s extraordinary The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997) and returned in the following year to play a figure of comparative rectitude, a landlady, in the Almeida theatre’s version of Pirandello’s Naked starring Juliette Binoche – who drew a fine caricature of Reeves as a first night gift.
She was back in Dublin as Mrs O’Kelly in a well-remembered revival of Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughraun (2005) and toured to the Edinburgh festivaland New York in 2013 with Deirdre Kinahan’s two-hander These Halcyon Days in which, opposite Stephen Brennan as a former actor, she played a retired primary schoolteacher in a nursing home with her customary humour, grace and large, watery eyes.
Her last stage appearance was as Juno again, directed by Dowling in his farewell production in charge of the Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis last summer. She had, said Dowling, grown even greater in the role, bringing an added elegance and finesse to the spirited mouthpiece of the Dublin tenements during the nationalist schisms of 1922.
Reeves’s films included Neil Jordan’s remarkable debut, Angel (1982), as well as the same director’s The Miracle (1991) and The Butcher Boy (1997), Mike Newell’s Into the West (1992) and Alan Archbold’s The Life of Reilly (1995).
She was briefly married to (and divorced from) the actor Barry McGovern and lived for more than 30 years with Julian Erskine, the executive producer of Riverdance, whom she married in 2000. She is survived by Julian, their two children, Gemma and Danny, and her siblings, Maureen, Tom and John.
Anita Reeves, actor, born 24 June 1948, died 7 July 2016
Hard to believe that Old Steptoe was Irish, but he was. Wilfrid Brambell was born in Dublin in 1912. He worked for a time as a reporter with “The Irish Times”. Durning World War Two he served with ENSA the force’s entertainmentorganisation. During the 1950’s he acted mainly on British television, often playing characters far older than himself. “Steptoe and Son” with Harry H. Corbett ran throughout the 60’s in Britain and was a huge success. There were two Steptoe films. Brambell also played Paul McCartney’s grandfather in “A Hard Day’s Night”. He won widespread acclaim for his contribution on film in Terence Davies “Death and Transfiguration”. Wilfrid Brambell died in 1985. Article in “The Guardian” about “Steptoe & Son” can be found here.
Dictionary of Irish Biography:
Brambell, Wilfrid (1912–85), actor, was born Henry Wilfrid Brambell 22 March 1912 at 6 Edenvale Road, Rathgar, Dublin, youngest of three sons of Henry Brambell, clerk in Guinness’s brewery, and Edith Brambell (née Marks), an opera singer. He made his first stage appearance at the age of two, entertaining wounded soldiers. In 1919 his parents separated and he went to live with his father in Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire), where he was raised by his aunt Louisa. He was educated at Kingstown Grammar School. In the 1930s he attended the Abbey School of Acting, and regularly appeared at the Abbey and the Gate. He believed the Abbey’s strength was its fusion of Anglo-Irish and Celtic elements, and that the theatre made a great mistake in jettisoning its Anglo-Irish heritage in the 1940s. He was a semi-professional actor for thirteen years, combining acting with working on the commercial staff of the Irish Field (published weekly by the Irish Times). Colleagues remembered him as a quiet man, with a dry sense of humour, who was ‘always slipping out to do a bit of acting’ (Ir. Times, 19 Jan. 1985). During the second world war he toured with the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), but was released from his contract in December 1944 to replace an indisposed Jimmy O’Dea (qv) as Buttons in ‘Cinderella’ at the Gaiety in Dublin. He was a great success in the role and O’Dea later praised his ability as a comic. Brambell was also adept at serious parts, with a particular affinity for the plays of G. B. Shaw (qv), and was recognised as one of the most promising young actors on the Dublin stage. After the war he went to England, and went through many lean years working in a variety of odd jobs until he secured regular work with the Swansea repertory company. In 1948 he married Molly Hall (d. 1956), of the New Dublin Theatre Group; they had no children and divorced in 1955 after Molly had become pregnant by their lodger. During the 1950s he appeared regularly on television, featuring in such notable BBC productions as ‘The playboy of the western world’, ‘The Quatermass experiment’ (1953), ‘1984’ (1954), ‘The government inspector’ (1958), ‘Bleak house’ (1959), and ‘Our mutual friend’ (1959).
With his gaunt face and thin build, he specialised in playing old men from his late 40s, and his performances as a homeless pensioner in the BBC television dramas ‘Too many mansions’ and ‘No fixed abode’ attracted the attention of writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. In 1962 they cast him as Albert Steptoe in a television play called ‘The offer’ which proved a great success and spawned the BBC comedy series ‘Steptoe and Son’ (1962–5, 1970–74). Set in a ramshackle house in Shepherd’s Bush, it skilfully mingled comic and tragic elements in its depiction of the relations between a father and son in the rag-and-bone trade. Brambell played to perfection the part of the scruffy, vulgar, devious old man who cunningly manipulated his ingenuous son Harold (played by Harry H. Corbett), forever puncturing his yearnings for a better life. However, he managed to imbue the role with great pathos, poignantly capturing the old man’s vulnerability and fear of loneliness, and the character stands as one of the most memorable in the history of British television. ‘Steptoe and Son’ was the most popular situation comedy of the early 1960s, drawing audiences of more than 22 million viewers; it has had regular repeat showings in Britain and internationally, and has inspired several foreign-language versions. Brambell also read the part for BBC radio (1965–7) and appeared in two Steptoe films (1972, 1973). He was the first actor in the BBC to get £1,000 for a half hour show and this, added to royalty payments from repeat showings, made him quite a wealthy man. In real life he was well-spoken, theatrical, and very dapper – the antithesis of his Steptoe character. Although extrovert in company, he had few friends and was generally reclusive. In the 1960s he made regular visits to Hong Kong, where he befriended a young Malaysian man, Yussof Bin Mat Saman, who lived with him until his death; in public he referred to him as his valet. Brambell drank heavily – sometimes before coming on set – which aggravated his tendency to fluff his lines. He could be a temperamental and difficult colleague and in 1965 Galton and Simpson seriously considered killing off his character.
Brambell appeared in over thirty films including Odd man out(1946) and Another shore (1948)), mostly in character roles, although he played substantial parts in Disney’s In search of the castaways (1962) and in the Terence Davies trilogy (1984). One of his most enjoyable roles was as Paul McCartney’s grandfather in The Beatles’ A hard day’s night (1964) (Brambell was a great admirer of their music and the band were all fans of ‘Steptoe’). In March 1965 he made his Broadway debut in the musical ‘Kelly’, but it closed after one night. He did however have theatrical successes in England in ‘The Canterbury tales’ (1967), and as Scrooge in ‘A Christmas carol’ – a role he believed he was born to play. He wrote a rather guarded autobiography, All above board(1976), mainly interesting for his observations on acting: he regarded it as ‘the least of the arts in that it is uncreative and merely interpretative’ and dismissed method acting as too solemn and analytical, noting that he found it difficult to follow lines ‘delivered through a mouthful of grapes’ (Brambell, 24, 23). The actors he admired most were F. J. McCormick (qv) and Cyril Cusack (qv).
He lived most of his latter life in a small flat in Pimlico, London, surrounded by antiques. To the end he retained great vitality, working regularly and enjoying foreign travel. After contracting cancer he died 18 January 1985 at Westminster Hospital, London, and was cremated at Streatham Park. He left an estate valued at £166,563.
For an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by Brian Friel, Ireland’s leading contemporary dramatist, Donal Donnelly, who has died after a long illness, aged 78, was curiously unrecognised. Like so many prominent Irish actors in the diasporas of Hollywood, British television, the Westd and Broadway – all areas he conquered – Donnelly was a great talent and a private citizen, happily married for many years, and always seemed youthful. There was something mischievous, something larkish, about him, too. He twinkled. And he had a big nose. He had long lived in New York, although he died in Chicago, and had started out in Dublin, although born in England.
In John Huston’s swansong movie The Dead (1987), the best screen transcription of a James Joyce fiction, he played the drunken party guest Freddy Malins with such wholesome charm, sly wit and nasal authority, that one would never have thought the character himself was a terrible bore. It is a treat of comic timing when Donnelly, having sat patiently through a high-flown debate about the merits of a big-deal production of La Bohème, innocently enquires if anyone’s been to the pantomime at the Gaiety. Set in Dublin in 1904, Huston’s film, possibly the greatest last movie ever made by a director, magically melds today and yesterday in the performances of his daughter Anjelica, Donal McCann and many others.
Early in his career, Donnelly brushed with John Ford, another legendary Hollywood director visiting Irish ancestral roots, in The Rising of the Moon (1957), an anthology of three stories by Frank O’Connor, Martin McHugh and Lady Gregory, founder of the Abbey Theatre. Ford was irascible and drunk on the shoot, forcing Donnelly to display his gap teeth to the British crew as evidence and consequence of imperial oppression and the potato famine. Donnelly always said he was considered for a time by Ford to play the lead, Sean O’Casey, in Young Cassidy (1965), but the role went, weirdly, to the Australian Rod Taylor, and Donal made do with a supporting role – literally, since he played a pallbearer. He played a private with a penchant for pigs in Sergei Bondarchuk’s disastrous movie Waterloo (1970), with Rod Steiger as Napoleon Bonaparte. But after that, his film career never really developed, with the possible exceptions of his appearance as a strange archbishop in The Godfather: Part III (1990) and a bemused foster parent entangled in a routine love story in This Is My Father (1999) with James Caan.
Born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, Donnelly was the son of a doctor. The family soon moved to Dublin. He was educated at the Synge Street Christian Brothers school, where he acted in plays with contemporaries such as Milo O’Shea, Eamonn Andrews, Jack MacGowran (with whom he later shared a London flat) and Jimmy FitzSimons, the brother of Maureen O’Hara. He toured with the actor-manager Anew McMaster – an Irish equivalent of Donald Wolfit – so Donnelly was no novice when he made his London debut at the Royal Court in 1959 in Lindsay Anderson’s production of John Arden’s brilliantly provocative anti-military drama, Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance. But his career really took off when he played Christy Mahon, the title role in The Playboy of the Western World, opposite Siobhan McKenna as Pegeen Mike, in the West End in 1960, followed by a lead role in O’Casey’s Red Roses for Me, opposite Leonard Rossiter at the Mermaid Theatre.
He returned to Dublin for the biggest break in his life – Friel’s first play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! at the Gaiety in 1964, presented by the Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir partnership of the Gate Theatre, the major artistic rival of the Abbey Theatre, with Edwards directing. Donnelly played the private voice of Gareth O’Donnell (Patrick Bedford was the “public” Gar), a man with a split personality leaving his homeland for America. He and the cast were a huge hit in Dublin and New York. Donnelly later played the sharp-witted cockney agent opposite James Mason’s titanic mystic in the world premiere of Friel’s masterpiece Faith Healer (1979) in New York, and the old missionary priest Jack in the Broadway premiere of Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa.
He was perhaps best known in Britain as the struggling songwriter Matthew Browne in the television sitcom Yes, Honestly (1976-77), co-starring Liza Goddard, but he will be remembered, too, as a splendid impersonator of George Bernard Shaw in his one-man show My Astonishing Self, which he introduced at the Dublin festival in 1976, and also in Jerome Kilty’s correspondence “drama” with Ellen Terry, Dear Liar, with which he bowed out on Broadway in 1999. Donnelly, much loved by his peers and contemporaries in the Dublin theatre – although he was never associated with the Abbey – is survived by his wife, Patsy, and their two sons.
• Donal Donnelly, actor, born 6 July 1931; died 4 January 2010
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
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Dictionary of Irish biography:
Donnelly, Donal (1931–2010), actor, was born on 6 July 1931 in Bradford, Yorkshire, the third son among seven children of James Donnelly (d. 1964), a general practitioner, and his wife Nora (née O’Connor). Dr Donnelly was originally from Tyrone and Nora from Kerry, and the family moved to Ireland when Donal was five. They lived in Victoria Road, Rathgar, Dublin, and Donal was sent to Synge Street CBS, where an inspiring teacher, Frank MacManus (qv), encouraged the boys to appreciate drama and put on their own plays. The school’s alumni included figures such as Jack MacGowran (qv), Eamonn Andrews (qv) and Milo O’Shea(qv). Donal appeared in some school plays with O’Shea, and they became friends.
Donnelly worked for a short time in a saddlery and outfitters’ business, but devoted most of his spare time to amateur drama after joining the Bernadette Players from Rathmines, first appearing with them in a satirical review in 1950. Edward Pakenham (qv), Lord Longford, gave him a job as an assistant stage manager in the Gate Theatre, and he first acted at the Gate in 1952. After that, he opted for an acting career, spent some time touring in Ireland with the actor-manager Anew McMaster (qv), and joined the Dublin Globe Theatre Company, with which he appeared in a number of avant-garde productions in a room above the gas company showroom in Dún Laoghaire.
In 1957 he appeared with Jack MacGowran in ‘The shadow of a gunman’ at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, and then in other plays in London. He achieved considerable success in several productions of ‘The playboy of the western world’ (by John Millington Synge (qv)), as Christy Mahon; one critic later remembered him as the best Christy he had ever seen, in a 1960 West End performance opposite Siobhán McKenna (qv) as Pegeen Mike. Donnelly followed this with the lead role in ‘Red roses for me’, by Sean O’Casey (qv), playing opposite Leonard Rossiter at the Mermaid Theatre in London.
Donnelly was lightly built, with great energy and vitality, and a notable ability to inhabit characters fully. A natural mischievousness enabled him to play comedy with ease, but he was immensely versatile and could give a vulnerable or sinister edge to his roles as required. From the mid 1950s onwards, he was omnipresent on the stage, both in Dublin and London. A major triumph was his role as Gar Private in the premiere production of ‘Philadelphia, here I come!’, by Brian Friel (1929–2015), in 1964 at the Gaiety, Dublin. He got equally good reviews in New York when the play was produced on Broadway in 1966. He was nominated for a Tony award jointly with Patrick Bedford, who played Gar Public. Donnelly appeared to acclaim in other Friel plays, notably in ‘Faith healer’ (1979; world premiere in New York), and in the Broadway premieres of ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ (1991), defining for American audiences the role of the old missionary priest, and ‘Translations’ (1995). In 1969 at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre, Donnelly directed his first play, another by Friel, ‘The Mundy scheme’.
He became something of an expert on George Bernard Shaw (qv), collecting Shaw memorabilia and appearing during the 1970s in a number of productions in Dublin, Boston and Hong Kong of a one-man show, ‘My astonishing self’, that he wrote based on the dramatist’s life and writings, and appearing in the play as Shaw in youth and also in fully-bearded old age.
Though Donnelly was most familiar in plays by Irish authors, especially Friel, O’Casey and Samuel Beckett (qv), his versatility enabled him to appear in a wide variety of roles. From 1973, he appeared 860 times in Anthony Shaffer’s ‘Sleuth’ in Dublin, London and New York, including a record-breaking run in the Olympia, playing opposite his close friend T. P. McKenna (qv). Another notable role was as the surgeon Sir Frederick Treves as a replacement actor during the two-year Broadway run of Bernard Pomerance’s ‘The Elephant Man’, opposite David Bowie’s John Merrick (1980–81). In the Broadway production of Peter Nichols’s ‘A day in the death of Joe Egg’, Donnelly replaced Albert Finney in April 1968; his characterisation of a father struggling with a child with disabilities was described as a ‘compassionate vaudeville of despair’ (New York magazine, 6 May 1968).
Donnelly had a small part in The rising of the moon (1957; dir. John Ford (qv)), and another in the first film made in Ardmore Studios, Bray, Michael Anderson’s Shake hands with the devil (1959), which starred James Cagney. Donnelly claimed that Ford had considered him for the lead role in Young Cassidy (1965), a biographical drama based on the life of Sean O’Casey, but eventually he had to make do with a supporting role as a hearseman. He was successful with Rita Tushingham and Michael Crawford in the risqué British comedy, The knack … and how to get it (1965), directed by Richard Lester, which won the Palme d’or at the Cannes film festival. Modest and unassuming, Donnelly saw himself primarily as a stage actor and had little interest in being a film star, but had several other film roles, including a notable part in The godfather: part 3 (1990) as the shifty, chain-smoking Archbishop Gilday in charge of the Vatican bank. He disliked the long periods of waiting about involved in film-making, and spent three trying months in the Ukraine for a small part as an Irish soldier in a the Soviet–Italian epic Waterloo (1970). Perhaps his most successful film role was as the drunken, sentimental Freddie Malins in The dead (1987), an acclaimed version of the story by James Joyce (qv) and the last film made by John Huston (qv). Donnelly’s charm and conviction redeems his character from the annoying mediocrity suggested in the story.
Donnelly kept busy in between theatrical appearances. He appeared in widely varying television programmes in Britain and America, including Z cars, the British sitcom Yes, honestly (1976–7), and the American crime series Law and order, but turned down the lucrative option of a regular part in Z cars to pursue more varied roles. Always prepared to try something new, in 1968 he collaborated with Tony Meehan (1943–2005), former drummer with the Shadows and, like Donnelly, born in England to Irish parents, on the music album Take the name of Donnelly, in which they explored traditional Irish songs. The following year Donnelly released the single ‘Dream things that never were’, which he wrote after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, and performed at a St Patrick’s Day festival show in the Royal Albert Hall, London. His protean and expressive voice made him an ideal reader for audiobooks, and he made at least thirteen such recordings, which ranged from Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (1991) to a forty-two-hour unabridged version of Joyce’s Ulysses (1995).
On 6 June 1964 he married Patricia (‘Patsy’) Porter, a dancer from Yorkshire whom he met on a production of ‘Finian’s rainbow’ in London. As Donnelly’s career on Broadway took off, he and his family moved to America and lived in Westport, Connecticut, from 1979 to 2008. They experienced a tragic loss when their only daughter, Maryanne, aged 21, was killed in a riding accident. Donal Donnelly, who had been a heavy smoker all his life, died of lung cancer on 4 January 2010 in hospital in Chicago, where he had spent his last years, close to his two sons, Jonathan and Damian; he was survived by them and his wife (d. 2013). A brother, Michael Donnelly, was a Fianna Fáil senator and councillor, and lord mayor of Dublin (1990–91).
by Pete Stampede
Dark-haired, sharp-featured and with a (shall we say) generous-sized nose, Donal Donnelly is primarily a man of the theatre, coming into the business during a rich period in Irish drama, and later extending into Britain, America and other media. For reasons too complicated to go into, he was actually born in Bradford, in Yorkshire in the North of England (in 1931); it hardly makes him alone among Irish actors though, it’s amazing how many were actually born in Britain (and for years, the whisper has been that Peter O’Toole was born in Yorkshire too, not Connemara as is usually claimed). Donnelly was raised in County Tyrone, and by the 1950’s had gained experience at both of Dublin’s premier theatres, the Abbey, which W.B. Yeats had been involved with the founding of and which made a policy of presenting plays set in and reflecting Ireland, and the Gate, founded later by actor-directors Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards (both actually English, but let’s not go into that), whose brief was more internationalist, although they would later promote an outstanding native playwright in Brian Friel.
Breaking into films around this time, Donnelly got to work for the legendary John Ford in The Rising Of The Moon (1957), a trilogy of tales largely cast from the Abbey ensemble, also including Jack MacGowran. However, interviewed for a recent biography, Print The Legend; The Life And Times Of John Ford by Scott Eyman, Donnelly recalled that the director was by now more than slightly irascible and reliant on alcohol, and insisting on taunting the British crew on the film; on noticing Donnelly had a gap in his teeth, Ford instructed him to display it to the crew and tell them they were directly responsible, as a result of the Potato Famine! “Amazing bull——”, the actor remembered. He went on to state that Ford had considered him for the lead in a long-planned biopic of Sean O’Casey; however, he only had a supporting role in the resulting Young Cassidy (1965), which was in any case fictionalised as the title suggests, completed by leading cinematographer Jack Cardiff after Ford was taken ill, and starred Australia’s own Rod Taylor, possibly the least convincing playwright on celluloid. Similarly perhaps, Shake Hands With The Devil (1959), an IRA-themed drama set in the 1930’s, had James Cagney heading a curious mix of American and British actors in the leads, with the likes of Donnelly, Richard Harris, Cyril Cusack, Ray McAnally and Noel Purcell—from “A Surfeit of H2O” reduced to supporting roles.
Coming to Britain (where he shared a flat with Jack MacGowran for a while), Donnelly can be spotted in the biased if entertaining I’m All Right Jack (1959) as one of shop steward Peter Sellers’ sheep-like acolytes, along with Victor Maddern—seen in “The Thirteenth Hole“—Cardew Robinson and bit-part king Sam Kydd, unwillingly welcoming upper-class twit Ian Carmichael to the workforce. His best film role was probably in Dick Lester’s The Knack… And How To Get It (1965), as a mate of irritating weed Michael Crawford and cockney Casanova Ray Brooks (seen in “Noon Doomsday“); this was well-praised at the time, although Lester’s self-consciously wacky comic devices and the rather sexist attitudes throughout have definitely dated it, the best thing was John Barry’s music (the CD is playing as I write this)—would any 60’s diehards want to kill me if I say Help! is probably Lester’s best film, better than A Hard Day’s Night? Donnelly also supported in The Mind Of Mr. Soames (1970), a little-seen fantasy with Terence Stamp as a savant and Robert Vaughn as a doctor, and in Sergei Bondarchuk’s commercially disastrous but at least unarguably epic-scale Waterloo (1970), with Rod Steiger as Napoleon, and Donnelly as a private with a fondness for pigs.
On the London stage, he did Sean O’Casey’s Red Roses For Me at Bernard Miles’ Mermaid Theatre in 1962, alongside Leonard Rossiter; there’s a picture from this, showing both of them, at the Rossiter personal site. “Dead On Course” was one of Donnelly’s first sightings on British TV. It was followed by THE Sentimental Agent, “May The Saints Preserve Us” (ATV/ITC, 1963), one of the earliest and least-known ITC series, here with Carol Cleveland also guesting, as a Texan heiress who’s taken a fancy to an Irish castle; Thirty-Minute Theatre, “Application Form” (BBC, 1965), with Denholm Elliott, one of the then-constant anthology series; Department S, “Les Fleurs de Mal” (ATV/ITC, 1969), as a gangster’s intended target, when Peter Wyngarde and chums are baffled by a shoot-out over the flowers of the title—and despite that title, it was partly set in Italy; and the well-rated fantasy anthology Out Of The Unknown, “Get Off My Cloud” (BBC, 1969), starring Peter Jeffrey, for once not as a diabolical mastermind, as an SF writer who suffers a major breakdown and whose thoughts become telepathically linked to Donnelly, playing “the most level-headed person he knows”, a sports journalist. This was made in colour, but has since been wiped (judging by publicity photos of the time, both actors were required to wear some pretty silly costumes).
In the middle of all this, Donnelly returned to Dublin for Brian Friel’s first stage play Philadelphia, Here I Come!, first staged at the Gaiety Theatre in 1964, with Hilton Edwards directing. The character of a young Irishman on the eve of his emigration to the US was split into two; Patrick Bedford, an actor who was groomed by MacLiammoir and Edwards to follow in their footsteps, but didn’t quite, played the man’s public face, all optimistic about starting a new life, while Donnelly was the “Private Gar”, the side of him that sentimentally and conservatively is terrified to break away, a role he reputedly gave a slyly malicious charm to. Friel’s examination of national character and contradiction was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences; still with Donnelly and Bedford in the leads, it ran for 326 performances on Broadway in 1966, gaining Donnelly a Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Play, with a West End production following in 1967. Later, Friel’s Faith Healer, which had its premiere on Broadway in 1979 and starred James Mason, in a rare stage excursion in the title role, featured Donnelly as the unworldly sage’s sharp-witted, exploitative agent. Interestingly, Friel’s stage directions specify that this role must be played “in the Cockney dialect.” More recently, a Boston revival of Friel’s Translations, in 1995 (which Ray McAnally, again, had starred in the original production of), saw Donnelly as a lovable, incorrigible old drunk called Jimmy Jack.
Donnelly’s most visible mainstream role was in a British sitcom, Yes, Honestly (LWT, 1976-77) a follow-on from No, Honestly which had starred real-life husband and wife John Alderton and Pauline Collins. This had Donnelly as a largely unsuccessful songwriter called Matt Browne (where would British sitcoms be without puns!), partnered by perky blonde sitcom regular Liza Goddard; co-writer Terence Brady had, in a former life, appeared in “Fog“. After years on stage, increasingly in the US, Donnelly made a sardonic contribution to John Huston’s last film The Dead (1987), as one of the party guests in this finely measured adaptation of the last story in James Joyce’s Dubliners; this had a largely Irish cast, but the interiors were actually shot in California, with Karel Reisz on standby to direct in case Huston became too ill. Surprisingly perhaps, Donnelly, by now grey-haired and looking somewhat professorial, turned up in Francis Ford Coppola’s delayed sequel, The Godfather Part III (1990), playing a less than saintly Archbishop; however, Coppola in his early years was a big fan of Dick Lester’s, and so had probably seen Donnelly in The Knack.
Occasional guest roles on American TV have included Spenser; For Hire, “One if by Land, Two if by Sea” (ABC/Warner Bros., 1986), and Law And Order, “The Troubles” (NBC/Universal, 1991), unfortunately inevitably cast in an IRA-themed episode, in a scene where a fundraising party is being held for a villain the cops are holding. His more recent films, however, have generally been back in Ireland; Words Upon The Window Pane (1994), from a one-act play by W.B. Yeats; Korea (1995), in what sounds like a very strong role as an angry father, but which doesn’t seem to have been shown outside of film festivals; This Is My Father (1998), as a bemused foster father in what was basically a straightforward Irish love story, but weakened by an unnecessary modern-day US framing with James Caan; and Love and Rage (1998), with that star of the 80’s Greta Scacchi, which (like most of her post-80’s films) has had trouble getting released. He has added recitals and performing Irish songs to his stage work, which has also included a one-man show as George Bernard Shaw, My Astonishing Self, and still for new Irish writers, the American premiere of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple Of Inishmaan, in 1998. He played Shaw again in Dear Liar, a revival of a 1960 two-hander drawn from Shaw’s correspondence with Mrs Patrick Campbell, at the Irish Repertory Theater on Broadway in 1999. (Years earlier, there had been a BBC TV version of this in the mid-60’s, with James Maxwell as GBS.) Donnelly has voiced more than a few talking books on audio tape, including full versions of Joyce’s Ulysses and Dubliners, recently also participating in a multi-voice version of the latter, with a different reader for each chapter. On the whole, he’s done very well for himself, considering that, in the 60’s at least, he had to labour under the considerable drawback of looking rather like me.
Geraldine Somerville was born in 1967 in Co Meath, Ireland. She trained at the London School of Music and Drama. Among her films are “Gosford Park” and “The Safe House”. She also played Harry Potter’s mother in the Potter series.
Her mother is a daughter of John Drummond, 15th Baron Strange, and sister of the late Cherry Drummond, 16th Baroness Strange.[2] She has an elder sister, Amelia Rachel (who owns and works in a restaurant with her husband in the Australian rainforest), and a younger brother, James Lockett Charles Agnew-Somerville, who worked in Hong Kong and writes poetry. Somerville attended dance classes from the age of six, and at eight was sent to the Arts Educational School, a boarding school in Tring, Hertfordshire. There she was taught ballet. She left at sixteen, but continued her studies in London.
Somerville trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (1989) in London. She did stage work and appeared on TV in episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Casualty(1993) before landing the role of Penhaligon in Cracker, which she held from the show’s inception in 1993 until its demise in 1995 and became one of the most memorable characters of the series. Somerville played Lady Stockbridge in Julian Fellowes‘s Gosford Park and Harry Potter‘s mother Lily in all the Potter movies. In May 2007, she played author Daphne du Maurierin the BBC TV drama Daphne. She plays a leading role as fictional Louisa, Countess of Manton in the 2012 ITV mini-series Titanic. In 2014 she played Princess Antoinette of Monaco in the film Grace of Monaco. In 2014, Somerville played Sarah Griffin in the BBC One mini-series Quirke.
Interview with Geraldine Somervile, please read here.
The great comedian and write Spike Milligan was born in India in 1918. The majority of his career was spent in British radio, television and film. He was part of the famous radio quartet “The Goons” which included Michael Bentine, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. His films include “The Bed-sitting Room”, “Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall” and “Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World”. Spike Milligan was an Irish citizen. He died in 2002.
“Guardian” obituary by Stephen Dixon:
Spike Milligan, who has died aged 83 of kidney failure, was once talking about Eccles, his favourite Goon Show character. “Eccles represents the permanency of man, his ability to go through anything and survive. They are trying to get off a ship on the Amazon and lower a boat. When they get to the shore Eccles is already there.”‘How did you get ashore?'”‘Ho hum, I came across on that log.’
“‘Log… that’s an alligator!’
“‘Ooh. I wondered why I kept getting shorter.'”
That brief exchange, recognisable instantly as something only Milligan could have written, does tell us something about this troubled, gifted man, with his unique mind and puzzled pity for humanity.
Jimmy Grafton, who co-wrote many of the early shows, maintained that Eccles was the nearest thing to Milligan’s own id – a very simple, uncomplicated creature who doesn’t want to be burdened with any responsibility and just wants to be happy and enjoy himself. Grafton added: “Spike achieved a reputation for eccentricity and has become, by his own choice, a sort of court jester. You begin to wonder to what extent in some circumstances the eccentricity is involuntary and to what extent it is deliberate. He can always get out of trouble by going a little mad.”
Milligan never achieved Eccles’s simple dream of happiness, and comedy is richer for his failure. He lived his life at the end of his mind’s tether and was always a man of seemingly irreconcilable contradictions: an anarchist with a passion for conservation, a vulnerable and acutely sensitive exhibitionist, a sophisticated person who preferred to retain a vision of childlike purity.
He was often distinctly unsettling, both offstage and as a writer/performer. The writer and jazz singer George Melly, while admitting that Milligan was not the sunniest person all the time, added that his was “the greatest mind in what is loosely called comedy”.
George Orwell’s assertion that “whatever is funny is subversive” was never truer than in the case of Milligan. He didn’t invent surrealistic radio comedy – nor did he ever claim to – but he opened up the medium with his uncluttered anarchic vision, and his influence since the early 1950s has been vast. It took its toll: “I was trying to shake the BBC out of its apathy. I had to fight like mad and people didn’t like me for it. I had to bang and rage and crash. I got it right in the end, and it paid off, but it drove me mad in the process… I’m unbalanced. I’m not a normal person, and that’s a very hard thing to have placed upon you in life.”
Milligan was born in Poona, India. He was the son of an Irish captain in the Royal Artillery, and Irishness, represented by his contempt for authority and his free-wheeling humour – one thinks of the novelist Flann O’Brien – always ran through his work. His father was a frustrated entertainer who did impressions of GH Elliott, the “Chocolate-Coloured Coon” at camp concerts, but never had the confidence to turn professional, and Milligan appeared at such concerts from an early age.
“I wasn’t consciously aware of it,” he said, “but I had had enough of the British empire. The Goons gave me a chance to knock people my father and I had to call ‘Sir’. Colonels. Chaps like Gritpipe-Thynne with educated voices who were really bloody scoundrels.”
Milligan was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Poona, and, after his father was posted to Rangoon in 1929, at the Brothers de La Salle; the family stayed in Burma until 1933, when they returned to England to what Milligan described as a fairly impoverished life and where his education continued at the South East London Polytechnic in Lewisham. He worked in a nuts and bolts factory, but had already decided to become an entertainer, and learned to play the ukulele, guitar and trumpet. At one point he won a Bing Crosby crooning competition at the Lewisham Hippodrome.
When the war broke out he joined his father’s old regiment and served in north Africa, where he first met Harry Secombe. He began to organise music and comedy shows for the armed forces entertainment organisation Ensa with Secombe and others, and was wounded in Italy. His war experiences later formed the basis for a number of bestsellers, including Adolf Hitler, My Part In His Downfall (1971), Monty, My Part In His Victory (1976) and Mussolini, His Part In My Downfall (1978).
Back in civvies in 1946, he formed a trio and started the weary round of agents and audition rooms. The act failed to generate any enthusiasm, and when it broke up Milligan “sort of wandered around”. It was during these wanderings that he renewed his friendship with Secombe, who had been struggling along as a comic at the Windmill Theatre in London’s West End which, in a pre-strip club era, provided static nude tableaux. He also made the acquaintance of another young hopeful, Peter Sellers, and the wild-haired and equally anarchic Michael Bentine.
All gravitated to Jimmy Grafton’s pub in Westminster, where they would do turns in the back room to entertain each other. And it was there that the seeds of the Goon Show were sown.
Grafton was writing jokes for the radio comedian Derek Roy and, impressed by Milligan’s unique view of the world, asked him to co-write some material. In this way Milligan wrote for several top comics of the day – Bill Kerr, Alfred Marks and even Frankie Howerd. He also wrote for Secombe and Sellers, who had started to become established, in a modest way, as radio performers. Sellers had the best contacts and first put the idea for the Goon Show to the BBC (“Goon” came from a strange being in the Popeye cartoons which Milligan loved).
The corporation was lukewarm, but agreed to give the show – starring Sellers, Milligan, Bentine and Secombe – a trial run under the title Crazy People. Thus it began in May 1951, swiftly changing its title and losing Bentine, whose surreal style clashed with Milligan’s. It ran, with 26 shows a year, for nine years. It toured the variety theatres as a stage show in the early 1950s, and it was on this tour that Milligan’s emotional imbalance began to assert itself. In Coventry his solo spot went badly and he strode to the footlights and raged at the audience: “You hate me, don’t you?”
Receiving an affirmative, he threw his trumpet to the stage and stamped on it, and when this was greeted with appreciative applause, left the stage and locked himself in his dressing room. Knowing about their friend’s mental instability, Secombe and Sellers broke down the door, fearing that he had tried to kill himself. He hadn’t, but it was an omen of unhappy times to come.
Milligan, with or without Grafton or Larry Stephens, wrote all the shows, with Eric Sykes drafted in to help on occasion. Although the show could hardly have existed without Milligan’s participation, his difficult behaviour kept him at constant loggerheads with the BBC. However, it was when the programmes ended – at Milligan’s instigation – in 1960 that his personal demons started to dominate his private and professional life. “When the Goons broke up I was out of work,” he said. “My marriage ended because I’d had a terrible nervous breakdown – two, three, four, five nervous breakdowns, one after other. The Goon Show did it. That’s why they were so good.”
Because of the “difficult” label, he almost had to beg for work, and the first to respond was the actor/manager Bernard Miles, who asked him to play Ben Gunn in Treasure Island at the Mermaid Theatre on the edge of the City of London. It was during its successful run that Milligan and John Antrobus wrote the bleak comedy The Bed-Sitting Room, which was set in the aftermath of the third world war. It, too, opened at the Mermaid, in 1963, with Milligan appearing as a sort of disruptive “chorus”, and then went to the Duke of York’s Theatre and the Comedy Theatre. In 1970 the play was made into a film.
His next piece, Oblomov, was just as successful, opening at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1964. It was based on the Russian classic by Ivan Goncharov, and gave Milligan the opportunity to play most of the title role in bed. Unsure of his material, on the opening night he improvised a great deal, treating the audience as part of the plot almost, and he continued in this diverting manner for the rest of the run, and on tour as Son Of Oblomo
In the late 1960s he did a number of television series, notably the World Of Beachcomber and Q5. He also became a favourite on TV chat shows, although it was with some trepidation that the host – be he Michael Parkinson, Eamonn Andrews or Terry Wogan – would introduce him. Milligan rarely had much of an inkling of what he was going to do, even at far more formal, scripted occasions. “I turn up on the day,” he said. “They point me at the audience and I do it.”
He also turned his attention to the cinema. His films included The Magic Christian (1971), The Devils (1971), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977) and Monty Python’s Life Of Brian (1978). On the the big screen there was not marked success, for it was impossible to get near the essence of Milligan in short, carefully rehearsed takes.
He worked harder than almost any entertainer one can think of, but seemed to have an imperfect grasp of what was good and what was dashed-off self-indulgence in his prolific output – a Private Eye cartoon in 1984 had a bookshop with a sign in the window: “Spike Milligan will be here to write his latest book at three o’ clock.” Novels, memoirs, verse – words gushed from him in a torrent.
He seemed to mellow in later years, but there was always a hint of the dangerous spark that had brought him to the brink of despair so many times and lit beacons of laughter to cleanse us all. In 2000, to a clutch of awards was added an honorary knighthood. It was honorary because – and earlier the cause of considerable furore – his father’s Irish background meant that he was denied automatic British citizenship and thus the official title.
His first marriage, to June Marlowe, ended in divorce. His second wife, Patricia Ridgeway, died in 1978. He is survived by his third wife, Shelagh Sinclair; they were married in 1983. He leaves two daughters and a son from his first marriage, and a daughter from his second.
· Terence Alan (Spike) Milligan, writer and performer, born April 16 1918; died February 27 2002.ccessed
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
The great Irish actor Mick Lally was born in Tourmakeady, Co. Mayo in 1945. He originally trained to be a teacher and worked in that profession for six years. In 1975 he along with Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen formed the Druid Theatre in Galway. He was a leading actor in many of the Druid Productions. “He gave magnificent performances in The Wood of the Whispering” and “Famine” , He appeared with Gabriel Byrne and Dana Wynter in RTE;s “Bracken” and then went on to play the same character Miley Byrne in the long-running “Glenroe”. His films include “Alexander the Great”, “Circle of Friends” and “A Man of No Importance”. He gave an especially poignent performance in the television adaptation of William Trevor’s “The Ballroom of Romance”. Mick Lally died suddenly in Dublin in 2010. Mick Lally’s “Guardian” obituary by Richard Pine:
The Irish actor Mick Lally, who has died aged 64, succeeded in straddling the worlds of stage, television and film. In particular, he was a vital presence in the renaissance of Irish drama in the 1970s and 80s, while making himself a household name in Radio Telefís Éireann’s soap operas Bracken and Glenroe.
The eldest of seven children on a 30-acre hill farm in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, in the Gaelic-speaking west of Ireland, Lally, through the generosity of a grandfather, attended St Mary’s College in Galway and University College Galway, where he read Irish and history. In extra-curricular time, he acted in the Irish-language college drama society, and won the British and Irish intervarsity boxing championship. He would later comment that acting, even in ensemble, was not unlike being alone in the ring.
From 1969 Lally taught at a vocational school in Tuam, County Galway, meanwhile acting at Galway’s Irish-language theatre, An Taibhdhearc, until in 1975, with Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen, he founded Druid Theatre Company, which transformed the way in which Irish and international, audiences received both classic and contemporary plays. Their first production was a challenging, chthonic reappraisal of JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, in which he played Christy Mahon, revisiting the play in 1979 as Old Mahon and again in 2005 in the DruidSynge celebration of the playwright’s entire canon on stage and film. Druid went on to lead the way in Irish theatre, and forged an international reputation for presenting new and classic works.
Lally was intimately at home in the western Irish world, its language, its mores, its inevitable decline. His visceral appreciation of rural life allowed him to give memorable performances of Manus O’Donnell in Brian Friel’s Translations (he created the role in the inaugural Field Day production in 1980); of Sanbatch Daly in MJ Molloy’s The Wood of the Whispering (1983); and John Connor in Tom Murphy’s Famine, which he also translated (as Gorta) and directed in 1975.
Parallel with his stage career, Lally was introduced to Irish television audiences in RTÉ’s rural soaps Bracken (1978-83) and its successor Glenroe (1983-2001), playing Miley Byrne, a gauche, innocent, bewildered farmer. Yet beneath the seemingly simple character was a wealth of native knowledge, shrewdness and genetic experience that deepened Lally’s portrayal of a man in a radically changing environment. Lally’s innate strength when impersonating rural characters – and this was his singular genius – came from the sophistication of his personal background. Education had heightened his ability to reach into his personal depths and offer his audiences a unique presence.
Film also claimed Lally’s attention. In 1978 he played opposite Cyril Cusack, Niall Toibin and Donal McCann in Bob Quinn’s Irish-language Poitín; in 1990 with Julie Christie, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Iain Glen in Pat O’Connor’s production of William Trevor’s Fools of Fortune; in 1994 with Albert Finney, Michael Gambon and Brenda Fricker in the Wilde-inspired A Man of No Importance; and in 2004 with Colin Farrell in Oliver Stone’s Alexander. These were cameo roles, complemented by similar TV appearances in James Plunkett’s Strumpet City and Thomas Flanagan’s The Year of the French. His TV portrayal of James Duffy, in Joyce’s story A Painful Case (1984), is regarded as a classic interpretation of a classic character.
Lally maintained a strict line between his private and public lives, but inevitably found it difficult to separate himself from, in particular, the persona of Miley Byrne. One wonders, for example, whether it was Lally or Byrne who made a political protest by joining the picket line in 1984, calling for a boycott of Irish shops that imported South African produce.
Lally was diffident about his professional talents, which on occasion could make him appear discourteous when trying to shrug off his many fans. In the rehearsal room and on camera, his stature encouraged younger colleagues to defer to his authority and to his judgment, not merely as a senior figure but as the purveyor of a wisdom, empathy and gravitas seldom encountered.
He is survived by his wife, Peige, their children Saileog, Darach and Maghnus, and by his parents, May and Tommy.
Garry Hynes writes: Mick Lally was a lion of a man. In the early 1970s, he strode through the streets of Galway with his tawny mane, beard, long coat and growing reputation as an actor and significant member of Galway’s arts/music/pubs/whatever you’re having yourself scene. Stories flourished round Mick. One of my favourites concerned a fallen tree which Mick and friends managed to feed through a window in their flat directly on to the fire, where it burned merrily for days.
He left Druid after the first few years, but he never stayed away for long. While his fame grew as Miley in Glenroe, he also created some of his most memorable roles on stage, notably Sanbatch in The Wood of the Whispering. It was an almost forgotten play from the 50s – Mick was not all that enthusiastic when I asked him to read it. But by the end of the first reading, his enthusiasm had shot up and Sanbatch, in this strange fable of a dying community centred round an old man living in the woods, became one of Mick’s greatest performances, with some of his greatest adlibs.
Adlibs were a Lally specialty. While rehearsing a scene where Sanbatch drives the old man, Stephen, dying of cancer, home from the pub in a wheelbarrow, the barrow tipped over, depositing Stephen on the ground. Without losing a beat, Mick said “Ah Jesus, who threw poor Stephen out of the barrow?” The line stayed in.
Mick and Peige made a contented home for themselves and their children in Dublin. Irish was and is the language of the house, and the feasts around their table, starring a revolving cast of family and friends, went on into the early hours with debate, discussion and raucous laughter.
Mick always had a new book, poem, music or something he had read in the paper to share with you. He was a good and cultured man. I’ll miss him to the end of my days.
• Michael Lally, actor, born 10 November 1945; died 31 August 2010
• This article was amended on 14 September 2010. The original named Lally’s character in Tom Murphy’s Famine as John Connell and said that Lally’s education was funded by an uncle. The picture illustrating the obituary was incorrectly captioned as a production of The Well of the Saints.
Lally, Mick (1945–2010), actor, was born on 10 November 1945 in Tourmakeady, Co. Mayo, the eldest of seven children (two sons and five daughters) of Thomas Lally, a hill farmer with thirty acres, and his wife May (née McGing). The district was bilingual and Lally grew up as a native speaker of Irish. He later recalled the role of radio broadcasts of GAA matches in promoting demand for rural electrification, and traced his interest in the plays of John B. Keane (qv) to a childhood memory of a radio broadcast of Sive.
Educated through Irish at the local national school (walking six miles daily to attend and taking part in school drama productions), Lally then received his secondary education at St Mary’s College, Galway (1960–65). (His fees were paid by his maternal grandfather, who had emigrated to America and strongly believed in education.) Lally had no interest in the prospect of inheriting the family farm – though his parents later offered it to him – and recalled that while boarding school raised his ambitions beyond simple emigration, in many other respects it left him naïve. From 1965 he studied Irish, sociology and history at UCG with the aim of becoming a teacher. He captained the university boxing team, twice winning the British and Irish intervarsity championship, and later remarked that the experience of boxing in a ring was not unlike that of an actor onstage.
Lally’s university years and participation in Galway’s developing bohemian subculture, including the burgeoning folk-music scene, brought general radicalisation. He came to see himself as part of a new generation determined to break with the restrictions of the past, and became a left-wing Labour party supporter, participating in a sit-in at Galway social welfare offices in protest against reduction in small farmers’ benefits. He acted with the UCG drama society, particularly in Irish-language productions. Although Lally’s extensive extracurricular activities led to his being obliged to repeat his final BA exams after failing in 1969, the growing demand for teachers following the implementation of free secondary education enabled him to secure a job even before he graduated BA and H.Dip.Ed. (1970).
He taught in Tuam Vocational School (1969–75), and later recalled that he had tried to make teaching fun, encouraging his students to act out Irish-language stories and appear in feiseanna. At the same time, he acted with the Galway-based Irish-language theatre company An Taibhdhearc, appearing in up to eight productions per year; his height and craggy features made him a well-known figure on the Galway scene. He was also noted throughout his career for vocal flexibility and love of language. He described himself as an instinctive actor who, like most of his theatre contemporaries, received little or no training and learned by experience.
In 1975 Lally was considering emigrating to London for the summer (to combine work on building sites with inquiries about the possibility of entering the city’s theatrical scene) when he accepted the invitation of Garry Hynes and Marie Mullen to join them as a co-founder of the Druid theatre company, based in Galway city. In the company’s production that August of ‘The playboy of the western world’ by J. M. Synge (qv), Lally played Christy Mahon. (In a 1982 Druid touring production he played Christy’s father, Old Mahon, a part he revisited in the filmed DruidSynge version of 2005.) Druid’s most frequent early performing venue was the Fo’csle, a tiny studio auditorium seating little more than forty; Lally later joked that the Fo’csle’s small scale made it ideal training for television acting. Initially without government funding, Druid developed into the only professional theatre company in Ireland outside Dublin, touring widely to provincial theatres and community halls. Lally participated in the company’s tour to Australia in 1987 to participate in celebrations of the bicentenary of European settlement; appearing in the ‘Playboy’, he took the opportunity to join a protest demonstration of Aboriginal Australians.
Moving to Dublin late in 1977 (although he continued to appear in Druid productions throughout the 1980s), Lally began to get parts on the Dublin stage. During his career he appeared in twenty-three Abbey Theatre productions, including a 1991 adaptation by John McGahern (qv) of Tolstoy’s ‘The power of darkness’. Lally’s performance as a blind fiddler in ‘Eejits’ by Ron Hutchinson, a 1978 Project Theatre production, brought him to the attention of the RTÉ head of drama, Louis Lentin (qv), and led to his being cast as a religious maniac in Eugene McCabe’s television play Roma(1979). This role, along with his performance in the series Bracken, won him a Jacob’s television award. Lally later delivered one of four monologues in McCabe’s television drama Tales from the poorhouse (1998), filmed separately in both English and Irish.
By 1979 Lally had secured the role for which he became best known: Miley Byrne in the RTÉ soap operas Bracken (1978–82) and Glenroe (1983–2001). The naïve Miley and his conniving hill-farmer father Dinny (played by Joe Lynch (qv)) were initially introduced as comic relief offsetting the stormy activities of the protagonist of Bracken, Pat Barry (introduced as a character in later seasons of The Riordans, and played by Gabriel Byrne). When Bracken was discontinued, Dinny and Miley were portrayed as selling their land and moving to a new farm in the Wicklow lowlands closer to an urban area, where they became market gardeners (later operating an ‘open farm’ for urban visitors) and were made somewhat more sympathetic figures. Their subsequent activities became the basis of Glenroe.
Lally later admitted that he only expected Glenroe to last for a year or two, and was surprised at the extent of its success. His portrayal of Miley combined an overlay of innocent naïveté (his catchphrase, ‘Well, holy God’, became proverbial) with an underlying body of inarticulate knowledge and fundamental common sense. Lally drew on his own knowledge and youthful experience of farming life, combined with his subsequent training and reflection, to considerable effect; it was often remarked that although Lally differed from Miley in many respects, he consciously refused to condescend to the character or to those who lived such a life or who identified with Miley. The character attracted tremendous popular affection, notably in his courtship of and subsequent marriage to Biddy McDermott (played by Mary McEvoy). Lally was often addressed as ‘Miley’ by people who met him in the street: ‘Even the punks at the top of Grafton Street will stop me and ask how are the carrots and the mushrooms doing’ (Irish Farmers’ Journal, 8 March 1986). In 1990 Lally remarked that many members of the audiences for his theatre productions came expecting to see Miley and left with the impression that they had seen Miley – rather than Lally – playing a part.
To some extent Lally played up this identification with Miley (though they shared certain personal qualities; posthumous tributes from Lally’s co-stars emphasised his gentleness and humility, which were conspicuous sources of Miley’s appeal to audiences). In 1985 Lally participated in an April Fool’s Day joke, announcing on the radio news programme Morning Ireland that he was resigning from Glenroe because RTÉ wished to introduce nude scenes. (Such an objection would have been more in character for the pious Miley than for Lally. Some years before his death Lally publicly revealed that he was a longstanding atheist, believing the suffering and cruelty in the world incompatible with the concept of a benevolent God.) In 1985, when Lally joined a picket line in support of Dunnes Stores workers who had been dismissed for refusing to handle goods imported from apartheid South Africa, it was suggested that it was unclear whether he was appearing as himself or as Miley. (Other activities associated with his left-wing political commitments, such as fund-raising events in support of the beleaguered leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and canvassing for the far-left political activist Joe Higgins in Dáil Éireann elections, were more clearly undertaken in propria persona.) In 1990 Lally as Miley even had an Irish chart hit with ‘The by-road to Glenroe’. Lally filmed the series every season from August to April, and engaged in travelling theatre productions during the summer hiatus.
In tandem with the last season of Glenroe (2000–01), Lally appeared in the sixth and last season of the BBC drama Ballykissangel (also filmed in Wicklow) as Louis Dargan, a solitary, inarticulate and economically marginal hill farmer. After the demise of both serials, Lally mainly engaged in touring theatre productions, although he continued to do television and film work. In 2008–09 he played a businessman in the Irish-language soap opera Ros na Rún, on TG4.
Lally appeared as a garda sergeant in Poitín (1978; dir. Bob Quinn), the first feature film made entirely in Irish, and his performance as the charismatic and sinister wandering shaman-fiddler Scarf Michael in The outcasts (1982; dir. Robert Wynne-Simmons), a horror film set in pre-famine Ireland, was critically praised. Other film appearances (mostly cameos) included The ballroom of romance (1982; dir. Pat O’Connor), Fools of fortune (1990; dir. Pat O’Connor), The secret of Roan Inish (1994; dir. John Sayles), as a horse seller in Alexander (2004; dir. Oliver Stone), and in the animated The secret of Kells (2009; dir. Tomm Moore) as the voice of the illuminator Brother Aidan. Lally declared, however, that he was primarily a theatre actor who saw film and television as stimulating variations on his true vocation.
On stage and in television plays Lally frequently played Irish countrymen and culturally conservative individuals in works by such authors as Keane, McCabe and Tom Murphy, though these were often isolated or deranged figures contrasting sharply with Miley’s benignity and deliberately intended to counter idealised images of the peasant as archetypal Irishman. Such roles included the lonely Sanbatch Daly, trying to hold a declining community together, in the 1983 Druid production of ‘The wood of the whispering’ by M. J. Molloy (qv); John Connor, the morally disintegrating O’Connellite village leader in the 1984 Druid production of Murphy’s ‘Famine’ (which Lally had translated into Irish, and performed, as ‘Gorta’, in 1975); the violent, pseudo-aristocratic fantasist Cornelius Melody in ‘A touch of the poet’ by Eugene O’Neill (1987 Druid production); the embattled conservative teacher Raphael Bell in the 1990 Macnas adaptation of ‘The dead school’ by Patrick McCabe; and the gravedigger suspected of murdering his wife in Martin McDonagh’s ‘A skull in Connemara’ (1997).
In 1980 Lally went to Derry city to create the role of the lame, frustrated schoolteacher Manus O’Donnell in ‘Translations’ by Brian Friel (qv), the first production of the Field Day company, and was depressed by seeing the Northern Ireland troubles at first hand. In the 1990s and 2000s he participated in the generally successful project of the director Ben Barnes to rehabilitate Keane’s image as a serious dramatist by staging innovative productions of major Keane plays involving revised texts developed in collaboration with the playwright. Lally drew particular attention for his portrayal of a lost, isolated and anguished Bull McCabe in ‘The field’ (as distinct from earlier renderings, notably by Ray McAnally (qv), which played up the character’s demonic violence), of the title character in ‘The year of the hiker’ (who returns years after abandoning his family to become a tramp), and of the frustrated bachelor John Bosco Hogan in ‘The chastitute’.
Lally married Peige (1979), a nurse from Inis Meáin; they had a daughter and two sons, and lived on the South Circular Road, Dublin, where Lally became a familiar sight on his bicycle. Irish was the language of the household; in later life Lally expressed dismay that the language-teaching methods his children experienced in school were fundamentally unchanged from what he had experienced in his own teaching career. Despite his atheism, his children received a Roman catholic education as he did not wish them to be isolated from their classmates. Lally died in a Dublin hospital on 31 August 2010 of a heart condition brought on by the emphysema that affected him in the last years of his life, and received a humanist funeral ceremony. In 2014 the Druid theatre’s auditorium in Galway city was renamed the Mick Lally Theatre. This was particularly fitting; for while Lally will be primarily remembered as Miley Byrne, his role in bringing modern literary stage drama to provincial Ireland was more fugitive but quite possibly more important.
Sources
Ir. Farmers’ Journal, 8 Mar. 1986; Ir. Times, 27 June, 21 Nov. 1987; 9 July 1988; 16 July 1990; 16 Mar. 1993; 23 July 1998; 25 Oct. 2008; 1, 3, 4, 8 Sept. 2010; 9 Oct. 2013; Cork Examiner, 26 Aug. 1987; 4, 17 May 1999; 24 Feb., 18 Aug. 2001; Sunday Independent, 12 July 1988; 5 Sept. 2010; Southern Star, 28 July 1990; Connacht Tribune, 17 Sept. 2004; Ir. Independent, 2 Nov. 2006; Ir. Catholic, 2, 16 Sept. 2010; Guardian, 9 Sept. 2010; Independent (London), 11 Sept. 2010; Druid Theatre Company, www.druid.ie (accessed May 2016)
Tim Seely was born in 1935 in England. He has featured in numerous television productions. He had a major role in the Irish made feature film “Sally’s Irish Rogue” with Julie Harris.
Stevenson has starred in several feature films, primarily in supporting roles. He made his debut in The Theory of Flight (1998) with Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, where he played the part of a gigolo hired to help Bonham Carter’s character to lose her virginity. In 2002, Stevenson starred in a short film No Man’s Land, which was the antipodal picture from actor/director Edward Hicks prior to his graduation from the London Film School. In the 12½ minute film, set during World War I, Stevenson portrayed an experienced private who is forced to help a novice officer (David Birkin), back to safety after they both find themselves trapped and isolated in “No Man’s Land” during the Battle of Ypres. In 2004, Stevenson starred alongside Clive Owen and Keira Knightley in King Arthur. He portrayed Dagonet, a knight of the round table who sacrifices his life for his comrades.
He is known for playing the character of legionary Titus Pullo in the BBC/HBO television series Rome. He shares the lead starring role in the series with Kevin McKidd.
On 24 March 2015 it was announced by producers that Stevenson would be joining the cast of the STARZ series Black Sails as the character Edward Teach.[3]
Stevenson was married in Westminster, London, in 1997, to actress Ruth Gemmell, whom he met when they worked together on the TV drama Band of Gold (1995). They later played a husband and wife on screen in Peak Practice (1997). The couple divorced in 2005 after eight years of marriage. He is now married to Elisabetta Caraccia,with whom he has fathered three boys. Sadly Ray Stevenson died suddenly in 2023 aged 58.
New York Times obituary:
Ray Stevenson, who in a 30-year career played a wide range of roles in television and films, among them a talkative soldier in the HBO historical drama “Rome,” the pirate Blackbeard in the Starz series “Black Sails” and the Asgardian warrior Volstagg in the “Thor” fantasy movies, died on Sunday. He was 58.
His publicist, Nicki Fioravante, confirmed his death but provided no further details. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica said Mr. Stevenson died on the Italian island of Ischia, where he had been filming a movie.
Mr. Stevenson was born on May 25, 1964, in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, according to the Internet Movie Database. He had begun a career in interior design when, in his mid-20s, he decided to try acting. Seeing John Malkovich in the Lanford Wilson play “Burn This” in London’s West End in the early 1990s was the catalyst.
“I was dumbstruck by John’s performance,” he told the California newspaper The Fresno Bee in 2008. “Everybody else disappeared. I knew at that moment there was something very valid about being an actor.”
He studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theater School in England, where in 1993 he played the title role in a production of “Macbeth.” Before the year was over he had landed a recurring role in a British mini-series, “The Dwelling Place.” He had worked more or less steadily ever since.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Stevenson appeared on various British TV series, including the crime drama “Band of Gold.” He landed his first significant film role in 2004, playing the knight Dagonet in “King Arthur,” with Clive Owen in the title role.
Then came “Rome,” a breakthrough role in a big-budget HBO series about ancient Rome that was the network’s attempt to create the next buzz-generating series after “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos.”
Mr. Stevenson’s character, Titus Pullo, was, as Alessandra Stanley put it in a 2005 review in The New York Times, “a drunken, womanizing lout — a soccer hooligan in sandals.” Titus Pullo’s friendship with another Roman soldier, played by Kevin McKidd, was among the show’s most appealing subplots, and Mr. Stevenson, a large man at 6-foot-4, seemed on the verge of something big.
“He’s kind of George Clooney on steroids,” Chase Squires of The St. Petersburg Times of Florida wrote in 2005. “By the time ‘Rome’ completes its run, the Irish-born English actor will probably be a star, and a very real candidate to replace Russell Crowe when Hollywood gets tired of that actor’s notoriously bad behavior.”
But “Rome” flamed out after two seasons, and Mr. Stevenson never quite achieved Clooneyesque stature. He did, however, land a number of meaty roles in lavish projects, including three movies from the Marvel Comics universe: “Thor” (2011), “Thor: The Dark World” (2013) and “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017). All three were box-office smashes.
He often referred to the “Thor” stories as “Vikings in space,” and in 2020 he got a taste of the earthbound version of that life when he joined the cast of the long-running History channel series “Vikings.” He appeared throughout its sixth season.
His other roles included a gangster in the 2011 movie “Kill the Irishman” and a British colonial official in the Indian film “RRR” (2022). He also played the vigilante Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, another character based on a comic book. He took on that role in 2008 in “Punisher: War Zone,” after Dolph Lundgren had played Castle in a 1989 movie and Thomas Jane had taken his turn in 2004.
The 2008 movie was an orgy of violence, as A.O. Scott noted in his review in The Times.
“Guys get their heads blown off, or severed, or pierced with chair legs, or pulverized with fists,” he wrote, “because that’s what they have coming and that’s what the fan base will pay money to see.”
His character, Mr. Stevenson told The Oklahoman, was supposed to be not a hero but an antihero.
“He really is on a one-way path and in his own hell,” he said. “You don’t want to be Frank Castle.”
Mr. Stevenson’s marriage to the actress Ruth Gemmell ended in divorce. He and his partner, Elisabetta Caraccia, had three children.
Todd Carty was born in 1963 in Limerick. He acted on many television series in Britain such as “Z Cars”. In 1983 he was featured in the film “Krull”. He had a long stint in “Eastenders” as Mark Fowler. He recently starred in “The Bill” on television. Interview on “Youtube” here.
Kerry Condon was born in Tipperary in 1983. She appeared in “Intermission” and in 2009 was Masha in “The Last Station”. She has acted on stage in Martin McDonagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan” for the Druid Theatre of Galway. “Youtube” interview with Kerry Condon here.
Gladys Henson was an Irish born actress whose career was on the British stage and in character parts in movies. She usually played careworn housewives. Her films include “The Captive Heart” and “The Blue Lamp”. She was especially good in Sidney Furie’s “The Leather Boys” in 1964. She died in 1982 at the age of 85. Her “Wikipedia” page can be viewed here
Patrick O’Connell was born in 1934 in Dublin. He was brought up in Birmingham and studied drama in Londonat RADA. He won great acclainm for his portryal of Edward Hammond in television’s long-running “The Brothers”. His film appearances include “Cromwell”, “The Hunting Party”and “The McKenzie Break”. Patrick O’Connell died in October 2017.
“Guardian” obituary by his daughter Kate O’Connell
My father, Patrick O’Connell, who has died aged 83, was an actor for 40 years. He first made his name in social realist drama, and went on to work with the RSC and on television.
Paddy, as he was known to friends and family, started in the theatre at that exciting time when French windows were replaced by kitchen sinks and he fitted the archetype of the “angry young man”. One of his big breaks was the role of Gunner O’Rourke in John McGrath’s Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun at Hampstead theatre in 1966, with James Bolam. “Patrick O’Connell creates a dangerous, pitiful psychotic who frightened me so much that if he had moved one step nearer the auditorium, I would have run for my life,” wrote Alan Brien in the Sunday Telegraph.
His first television work was as Derek in the factory-set Lena, O My Lena (1960) by Alun Owen, with Billie Whitelaw in the title role, for Armchair Theatre, directed by Ted Kotcheff, who was a major influence on Paddy’s work. He had his own series playing DI Gamble in ATV’s Fraud Squad (1968-70) and he played the eldest brother, Edward Hammond, in the BBC’s The Brothers (1972-76).
On stage, he was the original Stan Mann in Arnold Wesker’s Roots at the Belgrade, Coventry, the Royal Court and the Duke of York’s (1959) and was in Peter Brook’s US (an experimental play about the Vietnam war) with the RSC at the Aldwych (1966). He played McLeavy in Joe Orton’s Loot, at the Ambassadors (1984) and the Lyric, with Leonard Rossiter as Inspector Truscott.
Paddy had a lifelong love of Shakespeare and joined Peter Hall’s company at the RSC in 1967 to play Macduff to Paul Scofield’s Macbeth at Stratford upon Avon and the Aldwych. He also played Henry V in the Henrys with the English Stage Company at the Old Vic in 1985.
His film work included Tony in Alan Sillitoe’s The Ragman’s Daughter (1972), Sgt Major Cox in The McKenzie Break (1970) and Charlie Lyne in The Shooting Party (1985) with James Mason, Dorothy Tutin and John Gielgud
Born in Dublin to Richard O’Connell, an army officer, and his wife, Patricia (nee Wardell) and given away at birth, Paddy was rescued and raised from the age of three by a remarkable woman, Dorothy Thomas, from Birmingham, who nurtured him back to some semblance of normality, only for his father to place him at the age of five in a Catholic orphanage in Blackrock, Dublin. After a four-year fight, Dorothy was allowed to take him back, and, through her job as housekeeper to a kind and cultivated businessman, Paddy was introduced to classical music and the theatre, and his creativity encouraged.
Paddy rejected Catholicism with a religious fervour, saying that acting saved him and it was a great channel for angst and anger. He attended Birmingham TheatreSchool, then won a scholarship to Rada in London in 1955.
His first job was an Arts Council tour of Look Back in Anger and She Stoops to Conquer in 1957, on the first day of which he met Patricia Hope, a fellow actor. They married in 1959, and settled in Chiswick, west London, then Teddington. Pat went on to become a television casting director.
Paddy retired from acting in his early 60s to concentrate on his painting, linocuts and etchings.
He is survived by Pat, his daughters, Fran and me, and his grandchildren, Finn and Sadie.
His “Wikipedia” entry: Patrick O’Connell (born, January 29, 1934 in Dublin) is a retired Irish actor known for numerous performances on UK television and in films.
He was brought up in Birmingham, England and after working in the office of a department store he trained as an actor at RADA. He then appeared in repertory theatre, at the Royal Court Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
His television appearances include Fraud Squad as (Detective Inspector Gamble), Dixon of Dock Green, The Brothers (as Edward Hammond), Yes Minister, The Professionals, We’ll Meet Again, The Bill, Inspector Morse, Peak Practice, Dangerfield and As Time Goes By.
His film roles include The Shooting Party, The Human Factor, The McKenzie Break (as Sergeant Major Cox) and Cromwell.
He is also an artist known for his paintings and drawings.
Patrick O’Connell was born in 1934 in Dublin. He was brought up in Birmingham and studied drama in Londonat RADA. He won great acclainm for his portryal of Edward Hammond in television’s long-running “The Brothers”. His film appearances include “Cromwell”, “The Hunting Party”and “The McKenzie Break”. Patrick O’Connell died in October 2017.
“Guardian” obituary by his daughter Kate O’Connell
My father, Patrick O’Connell, who has died aged 83, was an actor for 40 years. He first made his name in social realist drama, and went on to work with the RSC and on television.
Paddy, as he was known to friends and family, started in the theatre at that exciting time when French windows were replaced by kitchen sinks and he fitted the archetype of the “angry young man”. One of his big breaks was the role of Gunner O’Rourke in John McGrath’s Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun at Hampstead theatre in 1966, with James Bolam. “Patrick O’Connell creates a dangerous, pitiful psychotic who frightened me so much that if he had moved one step nearer the auditorium, I would have run for my life,” wrote Alan Brien in the Sunday Telegraph.
His first television work was as Derek in the factory-set Lena, O My Lena (1960) by Alun Owen, with Billie Whitelaw in the title role, for Armchair Theatre, directed by Ted Kotcheff, who was a major influence on Paddy’s work. He had his own series playing DI Gamble in ATV’s Fraud Squad (1968-70) and he played the eldest brother, Edward Hammond, in the BBC’s The Brothers (1972-76).
On stage, he was the original Stan Mann in Arnold Wesker’s Roots at the Belgrade, Coventry, the Royal Court and the Duke of York’s (1959) and was in Peter Brook’s US (an experimental play about the Vietnam war) with the RSC at the Aldwych (1966). He played McLeavy in Joe Orton’s Loot, at the Ambassadors (1984) and the Lyric, with Leonard Rossiter as Inspector Truscott.
Paddy had a lifelong love of Shakespeare and joined Peter Hall’s company at the RSC in 1967 to play Macduff to Paul Scofield’s Macbeth at Stratford upon Avon and the Aldwych. He also played Henry V in the Henrys with the English Stage Company at the Old Vic in 1985.
His film work included Tony in Alan Sillitoe’s The Ragman’s Daughter (1972), Sgt Major Cox in The McKenzie Break (1970) and Charlie Lyne in The Shooting Party (1985) with James Mason, Dorothy Tutin and John Gielgud
Born in Dublin to Richard O’Connell, an army officer, and his wife, Patricia (nee Wardell) and given away at birth, Paddy was rescued and raised from the age of three by a remarkable woman, Dorothy Thomas, from Birmingham, who nurtured him back to some semblance of normality, only for his father to place him at the age of five in a Catholic orphanage in Blackrock, Dublin. After a four-year fight, Dorothy was allowed to take him back, and, through her job as housekeeper to a kind and cultivated businessman, Paddy was introduced to classical music and the theatre, and his creativity encouraged.
Paddy rejected Catholicism with a religious fervour, saying that acting saved him and it was a great channel for angst and anger. He attended Birmingham TheatreSchool, then won a scholarship to Rada in London in 1955.
His first job was an Arts Council tour of Look Back in Anger and She Stoops to Conquer in 1957, on the first day of which he met Patricia Hope, a fellow actor. They married in 1959, and settled in Chiswick, west London, then Teddington. Pat went on to become a television casting director.
Paddy retired from acting in his early 60s to concentrate on his painting, linocuts and etchings.
He is survived by Pat, his daughters, Fran and me, and his grandchildren, Finn and Sadie.
His “Wikipedia” entry: Patrick O’Connell (born, January 29, 1934 in Dublin) is a retired Irish actor known for numerous performances on UK television and in films.
He was brought up in Birmingham, England and after working in the office of a department store he trained as an actor at RADA. He then appeared in repertory theatre, at the Royal Court Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
His television appearances include Fraud Squad as (Detective Inspector Gamble), Dixon of Dock Green, The Brothers (as Edward Hammond), Yes Minister, The Professionals, We’ll Meet Again, The Bill, Inspector Morse, Peak Practice, Dangerfield and As Time Goes By.
His film roles include The Shooting Party, The Human Factor, The McKenzie Break (as Sergeant Major Cox) and Cromwell.
He is also an artist known for his paintings and drawings.
In 2005 he “cemented” his hands outside the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. He made a speech saying, “It will be a proud day for me. My appearances on the Gaiety stage are without doubt the highlights of my career and I am honoured to have been asked to give my prints”.
He played Dr. Paul O’Callaghan in the first series of the Irish TV programme The Clinic.
In 1973, Tóibín won a Jacob’s Award for his performance in the RTÉ comedy series, If The Cap Fits.
On 29 October 2002, Tóibín accepted a Best Actor Award in a Dublin ceremony.
Tóibín received an Honorary Doctor of Arts Degree from University College Cork (UCC) on 4 June 2010.
Tóibín was honoured with the Irish Film and Television Academy’s (IFTA) Lifetime Achievement Award at a ceremony at the Irish Film Institute on 3 November 2011. The award meant Tóibín became an honorary IFTA lifetime member.
Niall Toibin died in 2019.
Obituary in “The Telegraph” in 2019.
Niall Tóibín, who has died aged 89, had a mellow voice and glint in his Irish eye that made him one of the United Kingdom’s and Ireland’s most cherished character actors. He was ever-present in his homeland’s theatre, while recognised by British television viewers for playing archetypal Irishmen without veering towards stereotypes.
In Ballykissangel (1996-2001), adored by devotees of Sunday-evening feelgood television on both sides of the Irish Sea, he was Father Frank MacAnally, the cranky priest and regional superior of Stephen Tompkinson’s English curate moving to a parish in rural Ireland.
Father Mac was the traditional Catholic voice disapproving of the newcomer falling for Dervla Kirwan’s local bar owner – and eventually giving him the ultimatum of choosing between her or the Church, sending him on a retreat with the order to “scrub her” from his mind.
Catholic priests were stock-in-trade for Tóibín. A decade earlier, he had played both Father Mackay, giving Laurence Olivier’s Lord Marchmain the last rites, in Granada Television’s sumptuous production of Brideshead Revisited for ITV (1982) and Father Donavan, counselling Ivy Tilsley after the death of her son Brian in Coronation Street seven years later.
With Emma Wray, Jan Francis and Dennis Waterman in Stay Lucky CREDIT: ITV/REX
He also made his mark as the roguish Slipper, Flurry Knox’s groom, in The Irish RM (1983-85), the Channel 4 series starring Peter Bowles and based on the novels of the Anglo-Irish writers Edith Somerville and Martin Ross (the nom de plume of Violet Martin) set in the west of Ireland at the turn of the 19th century.
Tóibín described the role as “the perennially tipsy whipper-in of hounds, schemer, adviser, trickster, lovable at a distance, but odoriferous close up”.
His appeal became international when he appeared in feature films. Prominent roles were in the Irish emigration romance Far and Away (1992), as Tom Cruise’s father, and in the political thriller Veronica Guerin (2003) as Judge Ballaugh, alongside Cate Blanchett’s real-life journalist gunned down while investigating Dublin drug dealers.
With Fionnula Flanagan and Gabriel Byrne in Reflections (1984) CREDIT: BBC/COURT HOUSE/KOBAL/REX
The actor himself was proudest of his one-man shows, starting at his favourite theatre, the Gaiety in Dublin, with Confusion in 1971, and progressing to cabaret performances around the world. He starred in Frank McMahon’s stage version of Brendan Behan’s autobiographical novel Borstal Boy.
Tóibín played the adult Behan in the play at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1967, and when it transferred to Broadway in 1970, The New York Times remarked on the “sad yet cherubic smile ironically playing round his mouth”, adding that his resemblance to Behan was “uncanny”. That staging won a Tony award and he starred in nine separate productions over four decades.
Niall Tóibín was born in Cork City on November 21 1929, the sixth of seven children, to Siobhan (née NiSuileabain) and Sean Tóibín, a travelling teacher for the Gaelic League. He grew up in an Irish-speaking home and, as a child, showed a talent for performing. He sang in the cathedral choir and at Cork Opera House.
In Stay Lucky CREDIT: ITV/REX
In 1947, having been educated by the Christian Brothers at the North Monastery in Cork, Tóibín joined the Civil Service in Dublin. He performed with a Gaelic League drama society there, and semi-professionally at the city’s Abbey Theatre, before turning professional in 1953 to spend 14 years with Radio Eireann’s repertory company.
From 1967 Tóibín was regularly on television. He wrote and starred in the RTE sketch show If the Cap Fits (1973), playing a nun pulling Guinness out from under her habit in one episode.
He later played Edward Daly, a landowner out to swallow up the fields of Gabriel Byrne’s farmer, in RTE’s serial Bracken (1978-82); Stephen Burke of the IRA in the Channel 4-RTE Second World War thriller Caught in a Free State (1983); Lutz in the mini-series Wagner (1983-84), alongside Richard Burton as the German composer; the terrorist Sean Gallagher in ITV’s Confessional (1989); and the junkyard owner John Lively in the ITV sitcom Stay Lucky from 1990 to 1993.
Tóibín also portrayed Paddy Joe Hill, one of the six wrongly imprisoned for IRA bombings, in Granada TV’s drama-documentary Who Bombed Birmingham? (1990) and Dr Paul O’Callaghan (2003-05) in the first three series of the RTE medical drama The Clinic.https://www.youtube.com/embed/hkUWu2-4oQM
Among his other films were Ryan’s Daughter (1970), The Ballroom of Romance (1986) and Fools of Fortune (1990). He played another priest in the Clive Barker-written horror film Rawhead Rex (1986).
During seasons in Britain with the National Theatre towards the end of the 1970s, Tóibín was Oliver Cromwell in The World Turned Upside Down and The Putney Debates, Driscoll in The Long Voyage Home and Larry Slade in The Iceman Cometh.
A critic praised the “orotund grandeur” he brought to the lead role of Archbishop Lombard in Brian Friel’s Making History, premiered at the Guildhall in Derry before a run at the National in 1988.
Tóibín won the Irish Film & Television Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
In 1957 he married Judy Kenny, who died in 2002. He is survived by their son and four daughters.
Niall Tóibín, born November 21 1929, died November 13 2019
Patrick Malahide was born in Berkshire, England the son of Irish parents in 1945. He made his television debut in 1976 in “The Flight of the Heron”. His many television appearances including “Middlemarch”, “The Singing Detective”and the title role of “Inspector Alleyn” in the 1993 series. His films include “Comfort and Joy” “and the James Bond thriller “The World Is Not Enough”. His website can be accessed here.
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Maureen O’Sullivan obituary in “The Independent” in 1998.
Maureen O’Sullivan was born in Boyle Co. Roscommon in 1911. She studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton outside London. One of her class mates was Vivien Leigh. In 1929 she met director Frank Borzage who was in Ireland. He brought Maureen O’Sullivan to Hollywood to make “Song O ‘My Heart” with the great Irish tenor John McCormack. In 1932 she starred in one of her most famous roles Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan in “Tarzan, the Ape Man”. In all she made six Trarzan films and she is regarded as the definite Jane. She had a contract with MGM and starred in such classics as “The Thin Man”, “A Day at the Races”, “Anna Karenina” and “David Copperfield” as Dora Spenlow. In 1942 she retired to rear her family. She had seven children in all. In 1948 she returned to film making in “The Big Clock” with Ray Milland and Charles Laughton which was directed by her husband the Australian John Farrow. She had a remarkably long career and made over 65 films over a 65 span. She died in 1998. Maureen O’Sullivan’s daughter is the actress and activist Mia Farrow.
“The Independent” obituary by Tom Vallance:THE DELICATELY beautiful, Irish-born actress Maureen O’Sullivan will be best remembered for two reasons – her performance as Jane in a string of Tarzan films opposite Johnny Weissmuller, and as the real-life mother of Mia Farrow. She memorably quipped, when told that Frank Sinatra was hoping to marry her daughter, “At his age, he should mary me.
O’Sullivan’s own career was a long and distinguished one, including performances in such major Hollywood films as The Thin Man, Pride and Prejudice, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Anna Karenina, A Day at the Races, The Big Clock, and more recently Hannah and Her Sisters, in which she played mother to her daughter Mia.
Born in Boyle, Ireland, in 1911, O’Sullivan had had no acting training when she was noticed by the director Frank Borzage at a dinner-dance of Dublin’s International Horse Show. He had the waiter send her a note: “If you are interested in being in a film, come to my office tomorrow at 11am”, and subsequently he cast her as the daughter of tenor John McCormack in Song O’ My Heart (1930), which was being partly filmed in Erin before completion in Hollywood.
Though O’Sullivan’s inexperience was apparent, the film was a great success and the studio (Fox) gave the new actress a contract. Her next film was the futuristic musical, Just Imagine (1930), after which she was teamed with the studio’s top star Will Rogers in The Princess and the Plumber (1930). O’Sullivan later expressed dissatisfaction with her treatment by the studio, feeling that they used her as a threat to their top female star Janet Gaynor, who was on suspension for more money and a new contract. When Gaynor settled with the studio, O’Sullivan’s roles became smaller and the following year, her contract was terminated.
“I felt lonely, forsaken and unwanted,” she said later, but in 1932 she was signed to a contract by MGM and immediately cast as Jane in Tarzan, The Ape Man with the Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller as her co-star. In the Tarzan books, the heroine is Jane Porter of Baltimore, but MGM made her Jane Parker of London (O’Sullivan had been educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, and her accent was totally convincing). The actress had not read any Tarzan books, and recalled that the author Edgar Rice Burroughs sent her copies of them. “He was a nice guy,” she said recently, “and thought Johnny and I were the perfect Tarzan and Jane, which is lovely.”
O’Sullivan, besides her attractiveness, brought a sense of humour plus an appealing blend of sophistication and innocence to the girl who teaches the jungle-bred hero how to speak, starting with “Tarzan . . . Jane” (not “Me Tarzan, you Jane” as commonly misquoted). The second of the series, Tarzan and His Mate (1934) is generally considered the best, matching the first in lyrical beauty and excelling it in excitement and dramatic impetus. “Everyone cared about the Tarzan pictures,” said O’Sullivan, “and we all gave of our best. They weren’t quickies – it often took a year to make one.”
What the critic DeWitt Bodeen called the “sweet paganism” of the first two films is missing from the later ones, partly because of pressures from moralist groups who objected to the scanty costumes, and in particularly a sequence in Tarzan and His Mate (later cut), in which Tarzan tugs on Jane’s garment as they dive into the water and when she surfaces part of her breast is exposed. “It started such a furore,” recalled O’Sullivan, “with thousands of women objecting to my costume.”
In subsequent films Jane’s costume was more substantial while Tarzan’s loin-cloth was lengthened. Tarzan Escapes was started in 1934, but was over two years in the making, mainly because its first cut was too frightening and violent (including a vampire bat sequence). One of the directors brought in to re-shoot the material was John Farrow, who fell in love with O’Sullivan. The couple had to wait for two years for a papal dispensation because of a previous divorce of Farrow’s, but their subsequent marriage lasted 27 years (until the director’s death in 1963) despite his heavy drinking and infidelities. The couple had seven children – three sons and four daughters, the eldest girl Maria growing up to become the actress Mia Farrow. Between the Tarzan films, MGM cast O’Sullivan as ingenue in over 40 films – leading roles in B pictures but usually supporting roles in major ones.
She was the distraught daughter who asks investigator Nick Charles to locate her missing father in The Thin Man (1934), the first of the series and the start of a lifelong friendship between the actress and Myrna Loy (“I loved Maureen’s warm exuberance,” wrote Myrna Loy later). In The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), she was Henrietta, the romantically rebellious younger sister of Elizabeth Barrett, and in George Cukor’s classic film of David Copperfield (1935) she was Dora, David’s silly and ill-fated wife.
She was a flirtatious relative of Anna (Greta Garbo) in Anna Karenina (1935) and in Tod Browning’s bizarre Devil Doll (1936) she was the daughter of a wrongly convicted banker who gets his revenge by reducing his enemies to the size of dolls. With Allan Jones, she provided the romantic element in A Day at the Races (1937, starring the Marx Brothers) – O’Sullivan played the owner of the sanatorium over which Dr Quackenbush (Groucho) is put in charge – and she came to England in 1938 to film A Yank at Oxford in which she vied with Vivien Leigh for Robert Taylor. (Leigh had been O’Sullivan’s best friend at Roehampton when they were girls). One of the film’s uncredited writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who reputedly developed a romantic admiration for the actress and built up her part.
O’Sullivan was unhappy, though, that she was primarily identified with the role of Jane, and asked the studio to release her from the Tarzan series. A script was written in which the couple would have a son (adopted to placate the censors), and Jane would be killed by a hostile tribe, but when word leaked out, public protest proved so great that the studio re-shot the ending of Tarzan Finds a Son (1939) and gave O’Sullivan a raise in salary.
She was given the role of Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (1940) but this was her last major MGM film, and when her contract expired after Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942), O’Sullivan settled down to raise her large family. She returned to films in 1948 in her husband’s fine film noir The Big Clock, playing the wife of a magazine editor (Ray Milland), and followed this with another of Farrow’s films Where Danger Lives (1950) as a girlfriend of the doctor (Robert Mitchum).
In the mid-1950s she hosted a television show, Irish Heritage, but spent most of her time nursing Mia through a bout of polio. In 1958 her son Michael was killed in an aeroplane crash while taking flying lessons and in 1963 her husband died.
O’Sullivan had by then begun an active career in the theatre and in 1962 had opened in a hit comedy Never Too Late, receiving the best notices of her career as a middle-aged wife who becomes pregnant. Wrote Variety: “She looks great and handles light comedy with a warm, gracious flair.” She starred with the same leading man, Paul Ford, in the screen version (1965). She also starred in the Broadway version of the British comedy No Sex Please, We’re British (1973), gave an excellent performance in an all-star revival of Paul Osborn’s Morning At Seven (1983), and continued until a few years ago to be active in television.
O’Sullivan often professed a desire to remarry: “Children don’t take the place of a husband,” she said. “Many women – and I am one of them – need both.” In the late 1960s she fell in love with the actor Robert Ryan and it was thought that they would wed, but he then became ill and died in 1973, with O’Sullivan at his bedside. In 1983 she finally married again, to James E. Cushing, a building contractor.
A liberal, outspoken woman – when her two sons were arrested for possession of marijuana she commented that if youths want to indulge in activities it is their decision – she played mother to Mia in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), but Allen fired her from his film September (1987) and five years later, when his romance with her daughter broke up, she denounced him as a “desperate and evil man”. Over the years she came to appreciate the eternal appeal of the Tarzan films and their place in cinema history. “It’s nice to be immortal,” she stated, “and film has given us immortality.”
Maureen Paul O’Sullivan, actress: born Boyle, Co Roscommon, Ireland 17 May 1911; married 1936 John Farrow (died 1963; two sons, four daughters, and one son deceased) 1983 James E. Cushing; died Phoenix, Arizona 22 June 1998.
O’Sullivan, Maureen Paula (1911–98), actress, was born 17 May 1911 at Boyle, Co. Roscommon, one of the five children of Major Charles Joseph O’Sullivan of the Connaught Rangers, and his wife, Mary Lovatt (née Fraser). Educated briefly at a convent in Dublin, she also attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton in London. She completed her education at a convent in Boxmoor and at a finishing school in Paris.
Strikingly attractive, O’Sullivan was discovered in 1929 at the Dublin horse show ball by an American director, Frank Borzage, who was in Dublin casting actors for the film Song o’ my heart(1930), a musical starring John McCormack (qv). Signed by Twentieth Century Fox, she had minor roles in four more films before being dismissed by the studio in 1930. Following some films for independent studios, she signed for MGM in October 1931, embarking on her most famous role, of Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan in Tarzan the ape man (1932). Her second appearance as Jane, in Tarzan and his mate (1934), provoked an outcry from the Catholic Legion of Decency. Her provocative costumes were subsequently altered for later films such as Tarzan escapes (1936), Tarzan finds a son! (1939), and Tarzan’s secret treasure (1941). Throughout her career her supporting roles were generally superior to her more major parts, and she was critically acclaimed for her performances as Henrietta in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Dora Splenlow in David Copperfield (1935), Kitty in Anna Karenina (1935), Judy Standish in A day at the races (1937), and Jane Bennett in Pride and prejudice(1940). During the war she appeared in war shorts and advertisements for the Canadian government and travelled to various American cities to promote British and Greek war relief. In 1941 she was honoured at the ninth naval district’s governor’s day. After her sixth Tarzan film, Tarzan’s New York adventure(1942), she retired from the cinema for four years, devoting her time instead to radio broadcasts and local charities.
O’Sullivan returned to the screen in 1948 in The big clock. In 1949 she formed an independent film company devoted to films of a family theme, and in the 1950s she began a career in television drama that lasted for forty years. She also wrote a series of short stories for children which were later broadcast on radio. Theatre roles predominated in the 1960s and 1970s, and were only briefly punctuated by a short and unsuccessful period as co-host of The today show in 1964. She made periodic returns to the cinema in the 1980s and was highly praised for her brief role in Woody Allen’s Hannah and her sisters (1986). Allen dismissed her from his film September in 1987 and courted her public displeasure five years later when he separated acrimoniously from her daughter Mia Farrow. Celebrated throughout her career by various catholic guilds, she was honoured at George Eastman House at the 1982 Festival of Artists. In 1983 she received an honorary doctorate from Sienna College and in 1988 she was honoured by a parade in her native Boyle. Altogether she appeared in over seventy feature films, and numerous television dramas.
She married on 12 September 1936 John Neville Villiers Farrow, an Australian film director and producer; she was his second wife. They had seven children, two of whom, Mia and Tisa, became actors. He died in January 1963, and she had an affair with the actor Robert Ryan in the late 1960s. On 22 August 1983 she married James E. Cushing, a building contractor. She died 22 June 1998 at Phoenix, Arizona.
Sources
John J. Concannon and F. E. Cull (ed.), The Irish-American who’s who (1984), 655; Irish-American Magazine (Feb. 1989), 32–8; Connie J. Billips, Maureen O’Sullivan, a bio-bibliography (1990); Ir. Times, 24 June 1998; Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1998; The Independent, 25 June 1998; Times, 25 June 1998; Michael Glazier (ed.), The encyclopaedia of the Irish in America (1999), 757
Kitty McShane was part of the famous British double bill “Old Mother Riley and her daughter Kitty”. She was born in Dublin 1897. She was the fourth of seventeen children. In 1913 she married Arthur Lucan (Old Mother Riley). They became a popular music hall act. They began making films together in 1937 with”Old Mother Riley”. Together they made 13 Mother Riley films together. Their off-screen fights were legendary. Kitty McShane did not appear in the final Mother Riley film. Kitty McShane died in 1964. Radio recording of Arthur Lucan & Kitty McShane can be heard here. Very good article on Arthur Lucan & Kitty McShane can be accessed here on the Britmovie website.
Joseph O’Conor obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001.
Joseph O’Conor was born in Dublin in 1916. He made his professional stage debut in London in 1939 in “Julius Caesar”. His best known work was in the 1966 BBC series “The Forsyte Saga” which was hughly popular. He was also featured in the musical “Oliver” as kindly Mr Brownlow. He died at the age of 90.
“Guardian” obituary:
The actor Joseph O’Conor, who has died aged 84, appeared in 1966 in BBC Television’s last great success of the black-and-white era, The Forsyte Saga, playing the stern patriarch Old Jolyon.
On the big screen his career ranged from Stranger at my Door (1950) to Luc Besson’s Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) – taking in Mr Brownlow in the 1968 movie of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! The latter was a role for which, with his authoritative, kindly demeanour, he was perfect casting.
Joseph O’Conor
But O’Conor’s natural home was the stage. His 60th and last Shakespearean role was as Duncan to Sir Antony Sher’s Macbeth for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The production began at Stratford in 1999, then toured. O’Conor was flown home from Japan when his failing heart forced him to step down, but within weeks was back for the Young Vic run, his voice older but his presence still commanding. The production was screened on Channel 4 on New Year’s Day.
O’Conor was born in Seattle to Irish parents and, though almost all his life was spent in south-west London, he remained proudly Irish. He was educated at Cardinal Vaughan School in Kensington, and after the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art made his prewar debut in an Embassy Swiss Cottage production of Julius Caesar. At the end of the 1940s he joined the touring company of the last of the great actor-managers, Donald Wolfit, at the Bedford theatre in Camden Town. Wolfit valued his young protégé, giving him a string of Shakespearean parts. The pair alternated as Othello and Iago, and Wolfit vouchsafed his Gravedigger to O’Conor’s acclaimed Hamlet.
At the Bristol Old Vic in the late 1950s he played many leads – alongside Peter O’Toole among others – including the role of Henry Higgins in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. There was also a production of his own early play, The Iron Harp, set in his beloved Ireland. That play gave a first important role to Richard Harris, and O’Conor wrote five others.
West End aside, his career took in an American tour, appearances in the York mystery plays, at the Glasgow Citizens’, and at reps such as Windsor and Guildford. As an incurable company man from the 1970s, he enjoyed several seasons with both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His years with the latter were especially happy, founded on great mutual respect and affection.
O’Conor enjoyed a fertile period acting for Jonathan Miller, most notably as the Duke in Measure for Measure in 1975. And the lure in the 70s and 80s of the actor George Murcell’s ill-starred Shakespeare company at the St George’s Theatre in Tufnell Park, London, proved irresistible.
There were many other film appearances, including Tom And Viv (1994) and Elizabeth (1998). A highlight was the festival favourite The Forbidden Quest (1993), directed by Peter Delpuit, which gave O’Conor a unique one-man vehicle as a polar survivor.
I was lucky enough to produce one of the very best of his many TV performances when he led the cast of Drew Griffiths’ and Noel Greig’s Only Connect (1979). As a devout Catholic, O’Conor had an intellectual objection to abortion, adultery and homosexuality, but in his life and work he was understanding and supportive. In Only Connect, he played a man who in extreme youth had had a sexual encounter with the writer and prophet Edward Carpenter. The play confronted a very thorny issue for gay men, that of ageism, and O’Conor embraced the theme with a generous heart.
The production coincided with his marriage to the actress Lizanne Rodger, who was young enough to be his daughter, and so O’Conor had a special connection to the material of the play, which informed his work on it.
In that play, as so often, he was cast older than he was. Kenneth More, who played his son in The Forsyte Saga, was actually two years older than O’Conor, to their shared amusement. Prematurely white-haired, but also unmistakably mature, wise and protective – and sometimes impish and whimsical – he was a natural Chebutykin in Chekhov’s Three Sisters.
He rewrote as novels some of his other plays, such as Inca (sadly eclipsed by Peter Shaffer’s The Royal Hunt Of The Sun) and The Lion Trap. Among his children’s stories, he got to read King Canoodlum and the Great Horned Cheese on television’s Jackanory. In his last months, he completed his memoirs.
He was married first to Naita Moore; they had a daughter Rachel and a son Joseph. With Lizanne Rodger, he had two more children, Charlotte and Kit.
Joseph O’Conor, actor and writer, born February 14 1916; died January 21 2001
His obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.
Her theatre roles include playing Kate in the original production of Dancing at Lughnasa in Dublin (1990). She was married to the musician Sting from 1976 to 1984.
On 1 May 1976, Tomelty married musician Gordon “Sting” Sumner – best known as the lead singer and bassist for the rock band The Police – after knowing him for two years.
They met on the set of a rock-musical called Rock Nativity. She played the Virgin Mary; he played in the band. They have two children together, Joseph (born 23 November 1976) and Fuchsia Katherine (“Kate”) (born 17 April 1982.
Joseph Maher was born in Westport, Irelandin 1933. He has appeared in 43 films and has been nominated for three Tony nominations. Among his films are “Heaven Can Wait” and “The Out-of-Towners”. Joseph Maher died in 1998. His obituary in “The Los Angeles Times” can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
A veteran character player with a long career on stage and screen, the silver-haired, often mustachioed Joseph Maher was usually cast in comedic roles, generally as butlers or clerics. The Irish-born actor moved to Canada at age 22 where he briefly worked for an oil company and as a bartender before joining an amateur theater troupe. He made his professional debut with the Canada Players in a 1959 production of “The Taming of the Shrew” and migrated to the USA three years later. Maher soon became a prominent stage actor, co-starring with Dustin Hoffman in “Eh?” (1966-67), Zoe Caldwell in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1968) and Al Pacino in “The Local Stigmatic” (1969). During this time, he alternated between NYC and regional theaters. He also found time to act in the occasional TV production, like his supporting turn to Julie Harris in “Little Moon of Alban” (NBC, 1964).
Maher continued to spend much of the 70s and 80s alternating between theater and the small screen. He appeared in support of Rosemary Harris and Eva Le Gallienne in “The Royal Family” (1975-76) while simultaneously featured on the NBC daytime drama “Another World.” Maher earned back-to-back Tony Award nominations in 1979 and 1980 as Best Featured Actor in a Play for “Spokesong,” a drama set in Ireland, and “Night and Day,” a revival of Tom Stoppard’s play. In the 80s, the actor went on to establish himself as one of the foremost contemporary interpreters of the works of Joe Orton (often directed by John Tillinger). As the befuddled but determined police inspector Truscott in “Loot” (1986), Maher all but stole the show and earned a third Tony nomination. He similarly enlivened productions of Orton’s “What the Butler Saw” (which he performed in both NYC and London) and “Entertaining Mr. Sloan.” One of his last stage appearances was in a 1995 staging of “The Entertainer” at the Long Wharf Theatre.
Maher’s stock in Hollywood rose in the 70s beginning with his turn as a Wall Street executive interested in sex games in “For Pete’s Sake” (1974) followed by his butler to Warren Beatty in “Heaven Can Wait” (1978). He continued to amass credits in the 80s, although in mostly forgettable fare (e.g., “Going Ape!” 1981, “Funny Farm” 1988). In 1992, Maher played the bishop in “Sister Act” and ushered in a period of intense work. He was a museum curator in “The Shadow” (1994) and a dimwitted colleague of Albert Einstein’s in “I.Q.” (also 1994). The actor had one of his best roles as the artist’s dealer in “Surviving Picasso” (1996) while his last released film “In & Out” (1997) typically cast him as a priest.
In tandem with his feature work, Maher appeared as a regular on a number of TV sitcoms. He was Billy Dee Williams’ butler in the short-lived “Double Dare” (CBS, 1985), After a turn as St Peter counseling a returned soul in the Fox comedy “Second Chances” (1987-88), Maher joined the cast of “Anything But Love” (ABC) for the 1989-90 season. More recently, he had a recurring role of a doctor on “Chicago Hope,” co-starred as a college chancellor in “Goode Behavior” (UPN, 1996) and was an interior designer on “Style & Substance” (CBS, 1998).
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Joseph Tomelty was a gifted actor and writer who hailed from Portaferry in Co. Down. In 1938 he became part of the Northern Ireland Players. He wrote many novels and plays but also began a career as a reliable character actor. His films of note include “Odd Man Out”, “The Gentle Gunman” and “A Kid for Two Farthings”. He died in 1995. “The Independent” obituary:
Joseph Tomelty was one of the most important cultural and artistic figures in Northern Ireland since the Second World War; and the first significant literary artist from the northern Catholic community after partition – a status he enjoyed with caution and with a generous skill by which he laid a template for poets and writers from that population.
As an actor, playwright, novelist, short-story writer and theatre manager, over a professional career of only 16 years, Tomelty achieved an enviable success which crossed the borders of popular and critical acclaim, burning the image of his rugged, sensitive features, and distinctive white hair, across the sectarian divide into the common mythology of his chosen city of Belfast.
Tomelty was born in 1911 in Portaferry, Co Down – a small fishing village on the east coast of Ulster, and the setting for his most effective works. His father, James Tomelty, was nicknamed “Rollicking” because of his skill with the fiddle, and music became one of the strongest influences in the playwright’s work – three of his plays take their titles from traditional songs: The Singing Bird (1948), Down the Heather Glen (1953) and The Drunken Sailor (1954).
He left the local primary school, Ballyphilip, at the age of 12 and was apprenticed to his father’s trade as a housepainter. This involved classes at the Belfast Tech, and living in digs on the Catholic Lower Falls gave a peculiar authenticity to his second novel, The Apprentice, which follows the young Frankie Price out of a harrowing childhood into a chance of life. It remains a vivid and painful document of poverty of spirit and individual resilience; and the ghost of Frankie Price has haunted many of the novels and plays to come out of the north since.
At this time too Tomelty met Min Milligan, who was to create many of his most memorable characters, including Aunt Sarah in his ground-breaking BBC radio series The McCooeys. He married her daughter Lena in 1942 and they had two daughters, both now in the theatre profession – Roma and Frances.
Tomelty had already been instrumental in forming the Group Theatre in Belfast in 1940 and had started writing the plays for St Peter’s Players and subsequently the Group, which were to establish him at the very heart of northern culture after the war – Barnum was Right (1938), Right Again, Barnum (1943) and the controversial The End House, premiered at the Abbey in 1944 when northern theatres wouldn’t touch it.
Association with what was known as “the Tomelty clique” – actors, painters and writers, including the young Brian Moore, who gathered at Campbell’s cafe in the city centre – was a liability in the terms of the Unionist establishments at the BBC and in government. The End House, dealing with a Catholic family under the Special Powers Act, was simply not produced, even at Tomelty’s own theatre, the Group. It received its Northern Ireland professional premiere only in 1993 as a highlight of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s.
It is here that the extent of Tomelty’s commitment to and investment in Belfast is apparent. At the same time as pursuing a successful acting career in British and Hollywood films (like Odd Man Out, Bhowani Junction and Moby Dick), writing plays as diverse as All Souls’ Night (1948) and Is the Priest at Home? (1954), and his first novel, Red is the Point Light (1948), he was providing 6,000-word scripts for each weekly episode of The McCooeys – a total in the region of 800,000 words over seven years. It is hard to overestimate the impact of that series. In his hands, an intended middle-class drama became a narrative of working-class life which invented “Belfast” as a popularly conceived city, and so influenced a generation that the death of its author has struck thousands as a personal loss.
If he chose Belfast because Belfast meant life and street comedy – an interesting thought – it was otherwise in his two most enduring works. Red is the Port Light deals with superstition, oppression and murder on the east coast of Ulster; it is beautiful, black and bleak. All Souls’ Night is a relentless tragedy of human greed and repression, a classic Irish drama which reaches its several moments of greatness with deep emotional power. It returns Tomelty to the obsessive sadness of his east coast and draws out an awesome bitterness tempered by an achieved poetic vision. There are few Irish plays to match it. Which makes all the more poignant the vicissitudes of his own life. During the run of Is the Priest at Home? in 1955, while filming in England, he was injured in a car crash. He was 43. He was unable afterwards to resume the many commitments of his career.
But it was by no means the end. He was awarded an MA for services to theatre by Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1956, the first actor to be so honoured; in the 1980s, his novels were reprinted by Blackstaff Press in Belfast; in 1991, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland commissioned a bronze bust to celebrate his 80th birthday; in 1993, an edition of his plays introduced his work to a new generation; and his plays continue to be produced in both amateur and professional theatre.
At his funeral, which began in the splendour of St Peter’s Cathedral, in Belfast, and ended on a windy hill in Portaferry, the people of the city turned out to mark his passing. A piper playing “The Singing Bird” to accompany the burial in his home townland of Ballyphilip marked also the end of an era in northern Irish letters.
Damian Smyth
Joseph Tomelty, actor, playwright, novelist, theatre manager: born Portaferry, Co Down 5 March 1911; married 1942 Lena Milligan (two daughters); died Belfast 7 June 1995.
Tomelty, Joseph (1911–95), actor and playwright, was born 12 March 1911 in Portaferry, Co. Down, son of James Tomelty, house painter and keen traditional musician, and Mary Tomelty (née Drumgoole). Apprenticed to his father’s trade from the local school Ballyphilip at the age of 12, he moved to Belfast to finish his training and attended classes at the city’s technical college, where an English teacher, a Mr Tipping, encouraged him to write. Employed in the Harland & Wolff shipyards, he lived in lodgings on the Lower Falls road and began to act in 1937 with an amateur company, the St Peter’s Players. They produced the first of his thirteen plays, ‘Barnum was right’ (1938), which was also broadcast on BBC radio in December that year. With others in his company, he helped found the Northern Ireland Players in the winter of 1938–9. They staged his play again in the Belfast Empire Variety Theatre in June 1939, with great commercial success. In 1940 the Players joined the Jewish Institute Dramatic Society – under the direction of Harold Goldblatt (qv) – and the Ulster Theatre to form the Group Theatre, resident in the Ulster Minor Hall in Belfast’s Bedford St. Tomelty was an actor and the general manager of the company from 1941 to 1952; he was also booking clerk, usher, doorman, and cleaner. His plays brought the vernacular life of the north to the stage; ‘The end house’ (1944) is a protest against the special powers act, with the idealist republican Seamus MacAstocker killed by police who think he is trying to escape custody. It was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 28 August 1944. The audience, unsure of the play’s relevance, reacted to it as comedy; to add further insult, newspaper critics felt that it was not funny enough. Tomelty avoided explicit political commentary thereafter. ‘All souls’ night’ (1948) is a haunting tragedy first performed by the Group Theatre in September 1948. Its author played the lead role of John Quinn, the fisherman who loses two sons to the sea.
Red is the port light (1948) was his first novel and is the psychological drama of another sailor, Stephen Durnan, who survives a shipwreck only to marry the widow of the foundered vessel’s captain. A dark tale that ends in murder, it is entirely opposite to the radio serial ‘The McCooeys’ (1948–54), which he wrote and acted in for the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service. Requiring a script of 6,000 words every week, ‘The McCooeys’ played to huge audiences; Sam Hanna Bell (qv) remembered walking through the Co. Antrim village of Waterfoot on a summer evening and following that week’s story from house to house through open windows. Tomelty played the central role of Bobby Greer, the grocer who tells the family’s story. The apprentice(1953) is a Bildungsroman that concerns the growth of Francis Price, who shares the author’s trade – painting – and his stutter. Well-written, the novel is lyric and erotic; it brings the young urbanite Price to an appreciation of a wider life beyond the constricted Belfast he first knew. Tomelty left the Group theatre in 1951 to take the part of John Fibbs in a Tyrone Guthrie (qv) production of ‘The passing day’ (1936), by George Shiels (qv), for the Festival of Britain. The director David Lean noticed him, and a film career that had started with his role as the cabbie in Odd man out (1947) prospered. He played Doctor Brannigan in The gentle gunman (1954) with Dirk Bogarde and John Mills, and Dooley in Happy ever after (1954) with David Niven. Disaster struck when he took screen tests in 1954 to star with Ava Gardner in Bhowani junction. He suffered near-fatal injuries in a car crash that left him unconscious for weeks and unable consequently to write or act, with rare exceptions. But his earlier work did have continuing influence; John B. Keane (qv) wrote ‘Sive’ (1959) after seeing a production of ‘All souls’ night’ (1948) by the Listowel Drama Group in the late 1950s.
He lived in retirement after his accident for the remaining half of his life and died on 7 June 1995 in Belfast; he is buried in St Patrick’s cemetery, Ballyphilip. Contemporaries remembered him as a good-humoured, generous man whose career was prematurely ended. He married (1942) Lena Milligan and left two daughters. Recipient of an honorary MA from QUB in 1956 for his services to acting, he was the subject of a bronze bust by Carolyn Mulholland, commissioned by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, in 1991.
Sources
Irish Booklore, i, no. 1 (Jan. 1971), 106; no. 2 (Aug. 1971), 226–34; Sam Hanna Bell, The theatre in Ulster (1972); Christopher Fitz-Simon, The Irish theatre (1983); Linen Hall Review, autumn 1984; D. E. S. Maxwell, A critical history of modern Irish drama 1891–1980 (1984); Hagal Mengel, Sam Thompson and modern drama in Ulster (1986); Joseph Tomelty, All souls night and other plays, ed. Damian Smyth (1993); Edna Longley, The living stream (1994); Ir. Independent, Ir. Times, 8 June 1995; Belfast News Letter, 8, 9 June 1995; Kevin Rockett, The Irish filmography (1996); Robert Welch, The Abbey Theatre 1899–1999 (1999); Gillian McIntosh, The force of culture(1999
Joyce Redman was born in Co. Mayo in 1918. She was trained in acting in Londan at RADA. She had great success on the stage in the West End in such plays as “Claudia” and “Shadow and Substance”. In 1949 she was on Broadway in the very popular play about Anne Boylen, “Anne of a 1,000 Days” with Rex Harrison. She was nominated twice for an Academy Award for “Tom Jones” and “Othello”. She is the aunt of Amanda Redman. She died in 2012. Her “Telegraph” obituary can be accessed here.
Joyce Redman obituary in “The Independent” in 2012.
Her “Independent” obituary:
Joyce Redman was a talented and versatile actress who was equally at ease on stage, in films or on the small screen, during a career that lasted more than 60 years. She will probably be best remembered for her role in Tom Jones (1963), Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the novel by Henry Fielding. Here she played the servant Mrs Waters, opposite Albert Finney in the title role. In a deliciously sensual three-minute scene of amour gourmand, the pair sit facing one another at a tavern table and devour their way through a foreplay of soup, lobster, chicken, oysters and fruit before scuttling off to bed.Finney later said about the scene, “Joyce and I had done theatre together. We just played it for fun. It was filmed early in the morning and it took hours. They kept bringing more food – trying us out on different dishes. They’d say things like, ‘Bring more oysters. She’s very good on oysters.’ We weren’t sure the audience would get it at all. It seems they did.” The film won Oscars for best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score. Redman was nominated as Best Supporting Actress.
Joyce Redman was born in 1915 in Newcastle in Ireland to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. One of four girls, she grew up on Bartra Island in Killala Bay, Co Mayo. Following private home education and training at Rada, she made her first professional appearance as First Tiger Lily in 1935 at London’s Playhouse in Alice Through theLooking Glass. Audiences would have been charmed by the young actress, with her diminutive size, pale skin and bright red hair.
Her film debut was in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, in which she played Jet van Dieren. Despite being made as a morale-boosting propaganda film, it was praised for its artistic values, the critic Edward Dolan describing it as among the “best of British films of the era”.
During the war she had a close escape when, on her way back from the theatre, a flying bomb exploded nearby. Her initial reaction to surviving the blast was a feeling of what she called “an almost supernatural confidence”. She did not experience the shock until several days later, when she collapsed, a combination of the incident and the stress of opening performances in Peer Gynt (as Solveig) and Arms and the Man (as Louka) within the same week.
Redman’s New York debut came in 1946 in Henry IV Part 2 as Doll Tearsheet, the prostitute who frequents the Boar’s Head Tavern. She followed this two years later with the role of Anne Boleyn opposite Rex Harrison’s Henry in Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson remarked admiringly that she “…scorches the pages of the drama, to the point where the play is not a good fire insurance risk.”
For the next decade she divided her time between Broadway and London. Then, when the National Theatre Company was formed by Laurence Olivier in 1963, Redman played at the Old Vic and toured with the company to Moscow and Berlin.
Following the tremendous success of Tom Jones, and emphasising her dedication to her family, she recalled, “After Tom Jones I was offered all kinds of things, and I could have named my price, but the children were still pretty young, and no way could I leave them.”
She received a second Oscar nomination for her role as Emilia, servant of Desdemona, in the film version of Othello (1965), starring Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for the same production. Also made for the cinema, Prudence and the Pill (1968) saw her in an entertaining farce about marriage and infidelity starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Redman’s character becomes pregnant after a deliberate switch of contraceptive pills for aspirin.
In 1979 Redman returned to the stage for Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment, playing the wife of the landowner, opposite Ralph Richardson. Five years later she was in Clandestine Marriage, the first theatre production from Anthony Quayle’s innovative touring Compass Theatre Company. She continued with the same company, which produced a number of other plays, including Dandy Dick, Saint Joan and King Lear.
On television Redman played Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair and featured in several episodes of Ruth Rendell Mysteries and in Tales of the Unexpected. Her television movie roles included The Merry Wives of Windsor (1955), The Seven Dials Mystery (1981) and Prime Suspect: Scent of Darkness (1995).
Her last role was in 2001 for the TV movie Victoria & Albert, in which she played the elderly monarch and her son Crispin Redman played Mr Anson. Her niece, Amanda Redman, stars in the BBC crime series New Tricks.
“The Times” obituary:
One of the most dependable players on the London stage over more than 40 years, Joyce Redman was as warm-hearted as she was versatile. A small, 5ft tall, compact figure, with a direct gaze, a perpetually melting voice, and Irish inflections that she never lost, she could move untroubled from comedy to emotional drama, from Lear’s Cordelia to Dol in The Alchemist.
Although she began with the kind of parts to which she was physically suited as a girl — Lady Precious Stream, Alice in Wonderland — she soon developed in range and confidence. She is likely to be remembered most for her two largely classical seasons, one at the New Theatre during the Old Vic tenancy in the 1940s, another when the National Theatre company was at the Old Vic 20 years later.
Essentially a stage actress, she appeared in only a handful of films, though two of them brought her Oscar nominations. As the sexually ravenous Mrs Waters in Tony Richardson’s rollicking take on Tom Jones (1963) she appeared in the film’s most memorable scene, slobbering and slurping over a plateful of chicken’s legs and over-ripe fruit with Albert Finney. Her other nomination was for Desdemona’s servant Emilia in Othello (1965), a film of the National Theatre production with Laurence Olivier as the Moor.
She was born in 1915 at Newcastle upon Tyne, though her roots were in Co Mayo where she was brought up in a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Her father was an engineer. Educated by private governesses, she moved to London to study at RADA and went at 17 to Nancy Price’s company, then at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi. Within 12 months she was appearing as Mrs Cricket in The Insect Play.
At the Piccadilly in 1940 she joined Robert Donat as the orphan Essie in The Devil’s Disciple and when Alec Clunes began his management of the Arts in 1942 she became, most cheerfully, Maria in Twelfth Night. That Christmas she was Wendy, one of the best of her generation, in Peter Pan at the Winter Garden.
She had her first general acclamation as the little maidservant Brigid in Paul Vincent Carroll’s Shadow and Substance (Duke of York’s, 1943) and from 1944 to 1947 she acted continuously with the Old Vic company under Olivier and Ralph Richardson at the New Theatre in some of the great productions of their time. In a first season she was Solveig in Peer Gynt, preserving the simplicity without edging into the sentimental; Louka in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Lady Anne to Olivier’s famous Richard III and Sonya in Uncle Vanya.
Later she played Doll — which a critic called “one of the O’Tearsheets” — in Henry IV, Part II and Cordelia to Olivier’s King Lear. An Irish Dol Common, bouncing upstairs and down, in The Alchemist, followed during 1946-47. In 1946 she had appeared as Dol in New York, and she went back there in 1947 in Duet for Two Hands.
For a time she moved between New York and London. Her Anne Boleyn in the 1949 Broadway production of Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days “scorches the pages to the point where the play is not a good fire insurance risk”, according to the New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson. She was Anouilh’s Colombe for Peter Brook (New London, 1951), and at Stratford-upon-Avon (1955) had the ill luck to act in a remarkable season’s two leastregarded productions, though her Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well was well received.
Her next major engagement was with the National Theatre at the Old Vic from 1964. Here, as Emilia facing Olivier’s Othello, and Elizabeth in The Crucible (a critic wrote of “quiet magnificence”), she was in her fullest emotional power, varied by the comedy of Mrs Frail in Love For Love, and the tragi-comedy of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock. Remarkably, this was only the second Irish play in which she had appeared; speaking with a compromise between the Dublin accent and her own softer tongue, she was memorable in the last challenge, “Take away this murdherin’ hate and give us Thine own eternal love.”
She later appeared in such West End plays as The Lionel Touch with Rex Harrison and Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, and, at Chichester, Dear Antoine. In 1979, with an amusing verbal bite, she was the wife of the landowner (Ralph Richardson) in Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment at the National Theatre.
She was back in the West End playing Mrs Heidelberg in The Clandestine Marriage (1984) but as the years progressed she had fewer London parts. In 1997, in her eighties, she played Judi Dench’s senile mother-in-law in Amy’s View by David Hare at the National. She did not appear at the final curtain call, preferring to catch the 10.30pm train home from Waterloo. The play transferred to the West End.
She first appeared on television in the 1930s. She played a “seductive” Lady Macbeth in a 1949 American production and in Britain she was Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Becky Sharp, heroine of Vanity Fair. In 1976 she was the straight-laced Auntie Hamps in Clayhanger and there were later roles in Prime Suspect and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Her last screen part was the elderly Queen Victoria in the 2001 BBC drama, Victoria and Albert.
For some years she owned the island of Bartragh, a mile off the coast of Co Mayo, which had been in the family for several generations. But in 1984 she decided to sell it and she spent her later years in Kent.
She married Charles Wynne-Roberts, a former Army captain, in 1949. She is survived by three children, including the actor Crispin Redman. She was the aunt of the actress Amanda Redman.
Joyce Redman, actress, was born on December 9, 1915. She died on May 10, 2012, aged 96
Richard O’Sullivan, although born in England in 1944, was of Irish parentage. He spent his summer holidays on vacation in Ireland. When he was thirteen he acted in the swashbuckler “Dangerous Exiles” with Belinda Lee and Louis Jourdan and was Audrey Hepburn’s young brother in “The Nun’s Story”. He supported Cliff Richard in “The Young Ones” and “Wonderful Life”. In the late 60’s he started working on television and starred in many of the popular series of the 70’s and 80’s including “Doctor in the House”, “Man About the House” “Dick Turpin” and “Robin’s Nest”. He is now retired from acting. “Mail Online” article on Richard O’Sullivan can be accessed here.
Moyna MacGill was born in Belfast in 1995. She was the daughter of a solicitor. She acted on the London stage and in British films. In 1940 she was a widow and to protect her children from the London bombings she moved with them to New York. She then went to Hollywood where she worked as a sterling character actress in such films as “Green Dolphin Street”, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and on many television programmes. She died in 1975. Moyna MacGill was the mother of Angela Lansbury. Blog on Moyna McGill can be accessed here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Born in Belfast, she was the daughter of a wealthy solicitor who was also a director of the Grand Opera House in Belfast, a position that sparked her interest in theatrics. She was still a teen when she was noticed riding the London Underground by director George Pearson, who cast her in several of his films. In 1918, she made her stage debut in the play Love in a Cottage at the West End‘s Globe Theatre.
Encouraged by Gerald du Maurier to change her name to Moyna Macgill (which invariably was misspelled as “MacGill” or “McGill”, and on at least one occasion, the film Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven, as “Magill”), she became a leading actress of the day, appearing in light comedies, melodramas, and classics opposite Herbert Marshall, John Gielgud, and Basil Rathbone, among others.
Twenty-six-year-old Macgill was married with a three-year-old daughter, Isolde (who later married Sir Peter Ustinov), when she became involved romantically with Edgar Lansbury, a socialist politician, who was a son of the Labour MP and Leader of the Opposition George Lansbury. Her husband, actor Reginald Denham, named Lansbury as co-respondent when he filed for divorce. A year after it was finalized, Macgill and Lansbury married and with Isolde settled into a garden flat in London‘s Regent’s Park.
Macgill temporarily set aside her career following the birth of daughter Angela and twin sons Edgar, Jr., and Bruce (both went on to becomeBroadway producers, but Bruce is better known for his work on television, such as the series The Wild Wild West, Mission: Impossible, and his sister’s Murder, She Wrote), although music and dance were prevalent in their upbringing. When they moved into a larger house in suburban Mill Hill, she turned their home into a salon for actors, writers, directors, musicians, and artists, all of whom left an impression on young Angela and were instrumental in directing her interests towards acting.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Stephen Rea was born in Belfast in 1946. He trained at the Abbey School of Acting in Dublin and afterwards joined Deirdre O’Connell’s Focus Company along with Gabriel Byrne.
He also acted with the Field Theatre Company and in 1982 acted with them in Brian Friel’s play “Translations” with future stars Liam Neeson and Ciaran Hinds.
The same year he made his major film breakthrough in Neil Joran’s “Angel”. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as Fergus in “The Crying Game”.
Stephen Rea is an Ambassador for UNICEF Ireland. Article on Stephen Rea in “The Irish Tatler” can be viewed here.
TCM Overview:
Perhaps one of the most respected and established actors to emerge from Ireland, Stephen Rea spent years performing on stage and on screen before staking his claim in the United States with an Oscar-nominated performance in “The Crying Game” (1992).
Directed by long-time collaborator, Neil Jordan, “The Crying Game” both introduced him to a wider, international audience while reaffirming to fellow countrymen his status as an actor of considerable depth.
Prior to his breakout performance, Rea spent two decades working on stage, touring his native Ireland in small theatres until he worked his way up to bigger stages in Dublin and eventually London, while performing in films like “Angel” (1982) and “Life is Sweet” (1991).
He later formed his own stage company, Field Day, with acclaimed playwright Brian Friel, which allowed him to delve into more politically-themed material that helped attract attention to the debate concerning The Troubles, North Ireland’s long conflict with England.
But it was Rea’s nuanced and often sympathetic portrayals of otherwise complex characters that attracted the most attention and endeared him to audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Tara Fitzgerald was born in 1967 and is the grand-niece of the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald. In 1999 she won acclaim for her role as Lady Dona St Columb in the television adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s “Frenchmen’s Creek”. Among her screen credits are “Hear My Song” and “Brassed Off”. Since 2007 she has starred in the popular crime series “Waking the Dead”. Article in “The Guardian” on Tara Fitzgerald can be viewed here.
Rosaleen Linehan has apperaed in my stage revues written by her husband Fergus. She has acted in many plays in Ireland, Britain and on Broadway where she starred as Kate Mundy in “Dancing at Lughnasa”. On film she has been “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” and “Fools of Fortune” among others Rosaleen Linehan on “The Late Late Show” can be viewed here.
Lisa Richard’s agency page:
Film and television work includes Moone Boy (Baby Cow Productions), Sharpe’s Gold (ITV), Flat Lake (Flat Lake Productions), Happy Days (Blue Angel Beckett Film Production), The Butcher Boy (Butcher Boy Productions), About Adam (Venus Productions), The Hi Lo Country (Working Title), Mad About Mambo (Ormerod Ltd), The Assassins and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Beckett Film Project) and Snakes and Ladders (Livia Films). Rosaleen was most recently seen in Liola at the National Theatre andThe Beauty Queen of Leenane at the Donmar. Rosaleen has also worked as a composer on Mary Makebelieve (Abbey Theatre and Gate Theatre), Streets of Dublin (Tivoli Theatre), Many Musical Revues (Des Keogh and Peter O’Brien Quartet), Twelfth Night – Feste’s Songs (Gate Theatre), Speak of the Devil and Please Don’t Make me Feel so Happy (The Olympia Theatre). Rosaleen’s previous work at the Abbey Theatre includes The House of Bernarda Alba, The Importance of Being Earnest, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Dancing at Lughnasa, O Ananias, Azarias and Misael, Carthaginians, Mother of All the Behans, Sing for your Lunch, Mary Makebelieve and The Morning After Optimism. Other theatre work includes Endgame, Gates of Gold, The Double Dealer, She Stoops to Conquer, Twelfth Night, Mary Makebelieve, Blithe Spirit, Heartbreak House, Season’s Greetings and Happy Days (Gate Theatre), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Young Vic), The New Electric Ballroom (Druid), Blood Wedding (Almeida Theatre), Long Day’s Journey into Night (Gate Theatre), The Cripple of Inishmaan (Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles), Bailegangaire (Royal Court), Tartuffe (Roundabout, New York), Lost in Yonkers, The Plough and the Stars and Blithe Spirit (Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis), Juno (New York City Center) and Gypsy (The Gaiety Theatre).
Patricia Collinge was born in 1892 in Dublin was an Irish–American actress, dramatist, and writer, best known for her role as the tragic alcoholic Birdie Hubbard in The Little Foxes.
Patricia Collinge
Collinge was born in Dublin to F. Channon Collinge and Emmie (née Russell) Collinge. She was educated there first by a visiting governess and then at a girls’ school.
She took dance and piano lessons, which held no interest for her, and determined to be an actress.
New York Times obituary in 1974.
Patricia Collinge, an actress who started her career in London in 1904 and came to New York four years later to become an important part of the American theatre, died yesterday at her home, 30 Beekman Place. Her age was 81.
In 1932 when she appeared in “Autumn Crocus” with Francis Lederer, Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, critic, said of her: “Miss Collinge plays with the soft, pliant sincerity that makes her one of the most endearing actresses.?
In 1939 she took the role of Birdie Hubbard in “The Little Foxes” with Tallulah Bankhead and two yars later played the same part when Bette Davis had the lead in the film version.
As an indication of her versatility she wrote a play, “Dame Nature,” in 1938, that was an adaptation of a French drama. She also wrote a series of short Stories for The New Yorker, was a contributor to The New York Times Book Review, and was a councilor of Actors Equity.
Born in Dublin
She also wrote “The Small Mosaics of Mr. and Mrs. Engel,” a story of travel in Italy that brought her a gold medal from the Italian Government, and with Margalo Gillmore, was the author of “The B.O.W.S.,” the story of the American Theater Wing unit that took “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” to the soldiers in Italy and France during, World War II.
Miss Collinge was born and educated in Dublin. She made her first appearance on the stage at the Garrick Theater in London in 1904 in “Little Black Sambo and Little White Barbara.” After coming to New York, she appeared as a flower girl in “The Queens of the Moulin Rouge.” A series of plays followed that included “Everywoman” at the Herald Square Theater in 1911.
She dater toured with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in “A Regular Businessman” and was the original Pollyanna Whittier in “Pollyanna:” Her other plays included “The Heiress,” “Just Suppose,” “The Dark Angel” “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “To See Ourselves” and “Lady With a Lamp.” Her films included “Shadow of a Doubt” “Teresa,” “Casanova Brown” and “The Nun’s Story.”
Miss Collinge’s last stage appearance was at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in December, 1952, in “I’ve Got Sixpence.” She later was in television dramas with “Hitchcock Presents” and “Playhouse 90.”
She leaves her husband, James N. Smith, a retired insurance executive.
A funeral service will be held Monday at 11 A.M. at the Church of the Holy Family, 315 East 47th Street.
Oliver Reed obituary in “The Independent” in 1999.
Oliver Reed was a big burly presence on film who was well known for his hard-drinking macho . He was born in 1938 in London and was the nephew of the great film director Sir Carol Reed. He began acting on film in 1958 in the Norman Wisdom comedy “The Square Peg” where he played a menancing thug. He spent a few years in supporting parts and then gained larger roles in Hammer Horror movies. In 1968 his uncle awarded him the plum role of Bill Sikes in the wonderful “Oliver”. Reed was excellent in the part and I think the best performance in the film. He went to Hollywood and made several films there and back in Britain. In his later career the quailty of the films diminished somewhat. He had a leading role in the excellent “Gladiator” which he was working on in Malta when he died of a heart attack in 2000. He was buried in Co. Cork Ireland near to his home of several years.
Independent, The (London), May 4, 1999 by Tom VallanceOLIVER REED was something of a rarity among British film stars, a bearish, scar-faced, larger-than-life figure whose off-screen exploits, notably his heavy drinking and the scrapes that it got him into, brought him more fame and notoriety than his acting career.As an actor, he made his strongest impression when playing similarly extrovert figures – such as the tortured heroes of Hammer horror movies or the brutal Bill Sikes in Oliver! Most memorable of all was his work with the director Ken Russell on television (as Rossetti and Debussy) and on film in The Devils, Tommy and their first collaboration, Women in Love, in which the nude wrestling scene between Reed and Alan Bates remains one of the most evocative and remarkable sequences of the Sixties. Russell wrote later: I wonder if people would still be talking about the film today if I hadn’t included that particular sequence. . . it wasn’t in the original script. I didn’t think it would pass the censor and I knew it would be difficult to shoot. I was wrong on my first guess and right on my second. Olly talked me into it. He wrestled with me, ju-jitsu style, in my kitchen, and wouldn’t let me up until I said, “OK, OK, you win, I’ll do it.” Thanks, Olly, we made history.
Original Cinema Exhibitor’s Campgain Book – Press Book
He was born in Wimbledon, south London, in 1938, grandson of the actor- manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree and nephew of the film director Carol Reed, though he later stated, “I never sought anything but advice from my uncle.” He denied as apocryphal the tale that he was expelled from 13 schools (“I left of my own free will”) but he did run away from home at the age of 17 to become a bouncer at a Soho strip club. He had a brief career as a boxer (“I won the first fight, lost the next, then decided I didn’t like being hit”) and worked as a mini-cab driver and mortuary attendant before doing National Service as a member of the Medical Corps. After his two years in the Army were finished, he returned to London determined to be an actor: “When I came out I went to my uncle and he said to go into repertory if I wanted to be an actor. It was good advice, because I ignored it completely. I don’t give a damn for the theatre, films is where it’s at.”
Reed instead took his photograph around to agencies and managed to get bit parts and extra work in British movies including The Captain’s Table (1958), Beat Girl (1959, as a teenage loafer), The League of Gentlemen (1960, as a ballet dancer) and The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960, as a bouncer). “Everyone told me not to do horror films,” he later stated, “but I wanted to act. I remember standing on a table blowing bubble gum as a child and everyone applauded. I like that.”
It was a horror film that gave Reed his first major opportunity. Terence Fisher’s Curse of the Werewolf (1961) is considered one of the best of Hammer’s output, an earnest attempt to understand folklore which spends almost the entire first half examining the origins of the werewolf myth (its portrayal of 18th-century Spain caused the film to be banned in that country for 15 years). As the young man fighting the beast within himself, Reed gave a performance described by one critic as “mesmerising”. Further Hammer films included Joseph Losey’s The Damned (1962), in which Reed was the leader of a motorcycle gang, The Pirates of Blood River (1962) and The Scarlet Blade (1963).
In one of Michael Winner’s better films, The System (1964), he was a seaside youth who has a way with the ladies – retitled The Girl-Getters, the film did well in the United States. But it was Ken Russell’s Monitor television film about Debussy (1965), in which Reed had the title role, that marked what he later referred to as his “intellectual breakthrough”. He was now being considered seriously as an actor and had also become one of the British cinema’s most potent sex symbols. Reed received some of his best notices for his performance as a primitive fur-trapper who takes an orphaned mute for a bride in Sidney Hayers’s The Trap (1966), then worked with Winner again in The Jokers (1967) and I’ll Never Forget What’s-‘is-name (1967), co- starring Orson Welles, who became a close friend. Oliver! (1968), in which Reed brought a menace considered by some to be overly brutish to the role of Bill Sikes, was directed by his uncle and became an Oscar-laden triumph. (Carol Reed, fearful of accusations of nepotism, cast his nephew only when the producer John Woolf insisted that the actor was the best choice.)
Oliver Reed was now reputed to be Britain’s highest-paid actor and, after a black comedy, The Assassination Bureau (1968), and Michael Winner’s Hannibal Brooks (1968), a popular comedy-drama in which Reed and Michael J. Pollard were prisoners-of-war taking an elephant over the Alps, he made Women in Love (1970), Ken Russell’s fine adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel. The film won an Oscar for Reed’s co-star Glenda Jackson, who commented, Oliver and I had absolutely nothing to say to each other off- screen. As people we are chalk and cheese. What I admire in Oliver is his consummate professionalism. It doesn’t matter what state he may be in physically, when they say “Action!” he is ready, and that was the aspect of working with him that I liked. I’ve worked with him a lot and he is an infinitely better actor than he gives himself credit for. He is also a brilliant comic actor and he’s never really explored that in himself.
Reed’s off-screen behaviour was by now getting more publicity than his acting, and his heavy drinking began to affect his appearance, which was becoming increasingly bloated, though he had never considered himself handsome (“I’ve got a face like a dustbin,” he commented, “but people are learning that if you kick a dustbin over and rhododendrons drop out, it’s glorious.”) His next film for Russell was a controversial piece, The Devils (1971), in which Reed’s licentious priest provokes sexual hysteria amongst the nuns. In the unpleasant and violent western The Hunting Party (1971), he headed a gang of rapists and killers, and he was effectively insensitive as a bullying sergeant in Michael Apted’s The Triple Echo (1972), in which he again co-starred with Glenda Jackson. It was around this time that he told a New York reporter, “Do you know what I am? I’m successful. Destroy me and you destroy the British film industry. Keep me going and I’m the biggest star you’ve got. I’m Mr England.”
In Richard Lester’s The Four Musketeers (1974), he was a formidable Athos and in 1975 he gave impressive performances again for Ken Russell in both Tommy and Lisztomania, but he was also making too many pot-boilers, in order to support his penchant for drink and women. In 1970 he had divorced his wife of 10 years, Kate Byrne, by whom he had a son, Mark. He then embarked on a 12-year relationship with the ballet dancer Jacquie Daryl, by whom he had a daughter. He would frequently boast of his appeal for women, and on an aeroplane trip upset the captain by dropping his trousers and asking the hostesses to judge a “prettiest boy” contest. In a hotel in Madrid while filming The Four Musketeers, he stripped during dinner and jumped into a large tank of goldfish. When the police were summoned, Reed shouted, “Leave me alone. You can’t touch me – I’m one of the Four Musketeers!”
“I like the effect drink has on me,” he once said, “What’s the point of being sober?” His exploits were becoming legendary – he is alleged to have spiked the snooker star Alex Higgins’s whisky with Chanel perfume, denied head-butting the actor Patrick Mower at a party by explaining, “I leant across the table to give him a kiss”, and during a drinking marathon at a rugby club in Doncaster he threw pounds 50 on the bar saying, “Get all these working- class pigs a drink.” He once arrived at Galway airport lying drunk on a luggage conveyor, and in 1979 turned a soda siphon on himself and other celebrities at a boxing event in London, then jumped into the ring and did a striptease.
On film sets, however, Reed would still be both professional and courteous. “I like Reed very much,” said Michael Winner. “I think he is a very kind and decent person.” Ken Russell commented, “For all his macho image, Oliver is a sensitive actor who approaches his craft intuitively.”
In 1985 the actor again made news when he married the 21-year-old Josephine Burge, who had been his companion since she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl. The marriage was preceded by a two-day drinking session in which Reed claimed to have consumed 136 pints of beer.
Reed was impressive as the islander who advertises for a wife in Nicholas Roeg’s Castaway (1986), but the filming in the Seychelles was marked with incident – Reed was taken to court for allegedly exposing himself to his co-star Amanda Donohoe during the filming, and he was also accused of throwing his stunt double Reg Prince over a balustrade in a drunken bout. Television viewers will not soon forget Reed’s appearance on the chat show After Dark in 1991 when the plainly inebriated actor swore, fell over a sofa, then announced, “Right, I’m off to have a slash.”
Reed was warned several times by doctors that he would not live long if he did not give up drinking, and he was drinking with friends during a break from filming the Steven Spielberg production The Gladiators when he became fatally ill.
Robert Oliver Reed, actor: born London 13 February 1938; married 1960 Kathleen Byrne (one son; marriage dissolved 1970), (one daughter by Jacquie Daryl), 1985 Josephine Burge; died Valetta 2 May 1999.
Source: Tom Vallance, The Independent, May 4th, 1999 URL: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19990504/ai_n14233785/pg_1
Patricia Bredin was born in 1935, in Swansea) is a British actress and one-time singer from Hull, England, who was best known as the very first United Kingdom representative in the Eurovision Song Contest. She took part in the 1957 contest, held in Frankfurt, and finished in seventh place out of ten entries with the song “All“, the first ever song sung in English at the Eurovision. At 1:52, this was for a long time the shortest performance in the history of the contest.
However, this record was beaten in 2015 when Finland selected Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät to represent them in the 2015 edition of the contest. Their entry “Aina mun pitää” was only 1:27 long.
She took the part of Molly, the island girl, in the original cast of the musical Free as Air in 1957. In 1959, she starred in the British comedy film Left Right and Centre with Ian Carmichael. This saw British exhibitors vote her one of the most promising British new stars along with Peter Sellers and Hayley Mills. On Boxing Day in 1959 she also appeared in the BBC TV’s long running variety show The Good Old Days, which was rescreened on Boxing Day 2016 on BBC4 as part of the BBC’s celebration of the programme.
Bredin had the distinction of succeeding Julie Andrews as Guenevere in the Broadway production of Camelot.
She played the role from 16 April 1962 until she was replaced by Janet Pavek three months later.
In 1964, she married singer Ivor Emmanuel. but they had no children, and divorced within two years.
On her second marriage, she married the Canadian businessman Charles MacCulloch and became Patricia Bredin-McCulloch, but he died on their honeymoon. She built up a herd of cows on their estate and looked after them for almost ten years before financial complications brought her cow-womanship to an end.
She published some entertaining reminiscences about this period of her life in My Fling on the Farm (1989).
The Telegraph obituary in August 2023.
Patricia Bredin, singer and actress who was Britain’s first entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest – obituary
She took over the role of Guinevere from Julie Andrews in Camelot on Broadway and became good friends with her co-star, Richard Burton
Patricia Bredin in 1960 CREDIT: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Patricia Bredin, who has died aged 88, was a singer who became the UK’s first representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, in 1957 in Frankfurt; she was 22 when she was spotted singing at the Savoy Hotel in London and was asked by BBC executives: “Would you like to be on TV?”
At eight seconds shy of two minutes her song, All, held the record until 2015 for the song contest’s shortest entry, and as it was never recorded, it had no chance to make the charts. Patricia Bredin finished seventh out of 10, and the UK would not win until Sandie Shaw with Puppet on a String in 1967.
Patricia Bredin was born on February 14 1935 in Hull, where she attended Newland School for Girls, and began her singing career with the Hull Operatic Society, performing at the City Hall. She began singing in London, where she was talent-spotted at the Savoy.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xo0eJlq8J2Y%3F
Though she greatly enjoyed her appearance in Frankfurt – “they had a 60-piece orchestra. It was like being on clouds” – she was less enamoured of her conductor, Eric Robinson, “a bumptious fellow”.
“He came on from the other side of the stage and we met at the top, and he brushed past me and ran down in front of me,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘What a moron’, but I also thought, ‘He’s not going to upset me’.”
Though she only finished seventh in Frankfurt – she described All as “that terrible little song” – her appearance won her a part in the musical Free as Air at the Savoy Theatre. Film roles followed, and in 1959 she starred as a Labour candidate in the comedy film Left Right and Centre, a gentle political satire about a small-town by-election, opposite Ian Carmichael as her Tory counterpart (perhaps inevitably, the rivals fall in love).
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4MR9i6fdoYE%3F
Her performance led to her being picked out by British film exhibitors as one of the country’s most promising talents, alongside Hayley Mills and Peter Sellers, and in the same year she had a small part in the Geordie-inspired Bill Travers vehicle The Bridal Path, a cameo as herself in Make Mine a Million and a part alongside Sid James and Dora Bryan in the comedy about ENSA acts, Desert Mice.
Her highest-profile role came in 1962 when she took over Guinevere from Julie Andrews in Camelot on Broadway. She became good friends with her co-star, Richard Burton, and his wife Elizabeth Taylor, even more so when she married the Welsh singer Ivor Emmanuel.
Though she remained discreet over her relationship with them, a friend of hers, Angie Mansfield, told BBC radio Humberside: “Patricia invited us to stay at her house in Battersea. I was sitting opposite Ivor, who said: ‘we’ve just had Richard Burton here, after another row with his wife again.’ Liz Taylor always used to run to Pat when they had an argument and Richard used to run to Ivor.”
Patricia Bredin, far right, takes part in a charity fashion show at Danny La Rue’s club in Mayfair in 1969, also featuring Irene Handl (far left), Aimi MacDonald (third left), Julia Foster (fourth left) and Hayley Mills (third right)CREDIT: Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Patricia Bredin divorced Emmanuel in 1966 – they had no children – and she met a Canadian construction mogul, Charles McCulloch. In the early 1970s they were on holiday on a Caribbean island, sitting on the beach.
“Do you like it here?” McCulloch asked her. “Does a fish swim?” she replied. “Well, I’ve bought it for you,” he told her. They went on to marry in 1975, but McCulloch died on their honeymoon on a cruise ship on its way to the South Pacific, expiring while dancing the cha-cha-cha.
Patricia Bredin went on to establish a herd of cattle on their estate near Halifax, Nova Scotia, which she managed for nearly a decade. She chronicled her experiences in her 1989 memoir My Fling on the Farm. “There’s nothing worse than the headache you get from having 60 cows to muck out,” she wrote. “It was a form of insanity which lasted eight years. I suddenly came to my senses and gave them all away.”
Patricia Bredin remained in Nova Scotia for the rest of her life.
Patricia Bredin, born February 14 1935, died August 14 2023
Patrick McGoohan acheived immortal television fame through his lead role in two cult British series of the 1960’s – “Dangerman” and “The Prisoner”. He was born in New York in 1928 and raised in Co. Leitrim, Ireland and then in Sheffield in the UK. He commenced his career on British films such as “Nor the Moon by Night” and “Hell Drivers”. In 1967 he went to Hollywood to make “Ice Station Zebra”. He made many high profile television appearances in the U.S. in the 70’s and 80’s and in 1995 he starred with Mel Gibson in “Braveheart”. He died in 2002.
“Guardian” obituary:
The handsome and steady-eyed Patrick McGoohan, who has died aged 80, was the star, co-writer and sometimes director of one of British television’s most original and challenging series of the 1960s, The Prisoner. In it, he played Number Six, a mysterious, resigned former secret agent who is always trying to escape from the Village, an apparently congenial community which is in fact a virtual prison for people who know too much. They are allowed to be comfortable there only if they conform completely and do not try to escape.
McGoohan was at the time, 1967, the highest earning British TV star, paid £2,000 a week through appearing in a highly successful secret agent series called Danger Man, in which he was John Drake, a European security man who – on McGoohan’s own insistence – never carried a gun or seduced a woman. But he was becoming disenchanted with the series, whose American purchasers from Lew Grade’s British television company ITC were pressing for more stock banalities such as car chases, shoot-outs and sex scenes.
He was invited to lunch with one American executive, who explained that they wanted pictures of him on the screen with glamorous girls – or, as McGoohan himself put it, “the corny showbusiness formula, the publicity machine grinding away”. He declined, and the lunch lasted only six minutes.
McGoohan, who had his own production company, Everyman Films, suggested to Grade a different, seven-part series for which he and others had prepared scripts, called The Prisoner. Grade cheerfully admitted that he had not understood a word of what McGoohan proposed, but had so much confidence in him that he agreed to fund it immediately.
Grade’s chief international customer, however, wanted a longer series. There were 17 Prisoner programmes, each of them loaded with mysterious psychological nuances, and set in an ideally artificial Village – in reality Portmeirion, an experimental community with exotic buildings designed by the architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, in north Wales.
From the opening titles, the programme was no easy ride. An angry secret agent drives into London in his fashionable Lotus 7 as a storm threatens, bursts into his boss’s office, throws his resignation down on to his desk, and storms out again. At home later, he finds an undertaker at his door. Gas comes through the keyhole, and he collapses as he packs his bags to go away. He wakes up in the Village, and no one will tell him where he is or why he is there, only that he is Number Six. ” I am not a number, I am a free man!” is his answer – and battle was joined in 17 attempted escapes.
In the series McGoohan met several sinister Number Twos but could never find out who Number One was until the last episode, improvised by McGoohan and his large writing team at the last moment, when Number One’s false face was pulled off to reveal a monkey’s underneath. When that too was pulled off, it revealed the face of McGoohan’s Number Six himself.
The implication that human beings can imprison themselves was timely in the swinging 60s, while at the same time the notion of the security services as the real enemy was seeping its way into fiction that had previously existed in more black and white terms. The programme achieved cult status for both itself and McGoohan personally, who had involved himself in all aspects of the productions in a way his colleagues thought obsessive. He became a darling of the campuses, but found that The Prisoner was a difficult act to follow.
In 1974, Everyman Films went bankrupt with debts of £63,000, at least half of it owed to the Inland Revenue. By the 1980s, McGoohan had recovered, The movie Kings and Desperate Men (1981) was praised by British critics and he starred on Broadway in Hugh Whitemore’s Pack of Lies.
The cosmopolitan variety of his professional interests owed something to his background. He was born in New York to parents who were once Irish farmers. His father, though barely literate, had an ear for Shakespeare, so that when Patrick read plays to him, he would remember and recite whole passages months later.
The family returned to Ireland when he was six months old and then, when he was eight, moved to Sheffield. Patrick later won a scholarship to Ratcliffe college in Leicester, where he played Lear in a school production. Leaving school at 16, he went to work in a wire mill, rising from the factory floor to the offices and then leaving to work in a bank.
This made him feel caged, so he set up instead as a chicken farmer, until an attack of bronchial asthma put him in bed for six months. He walked around Sheffield looking for work and eventually tried the Sheffield Repertory Company, for which he became assistant stage manager. When members of the cast were off sick, he was asked to step in, and found that he was best in the lighter Shakespeare plays, gaining praise for his Petruchio.
McGoohan stayed for four years, by which time he had appeared in 200 plays, including a touring production of The Cocktail Party in a small mining town, lit by miners’ lamps when the electricity failed. He met and married the actor Joan Drummond, with whom he had three daughters.
He made his first appearance in the West End in 1955 as the lead in Serious Charge. Orson Welles saw him there and asked him to play Starbuck in his production of Moby Dick Rehearsed. At the same time he stood in for Dirk Bogarde during a screen test, and was offered a five-year contract with Rank. But the studio’s “charm school” approach irked him and the contract petered out after four films.
After this, he turned more towards television and appeared in a production of Clifford Odets’s The Big Knife, about a paranoid Hollywood producer and the protege actor who he thinks has betrayed him. It was seen by Grade, who thought McGoohan ideal for John Drake in the Danger Man scripts. From 1960, McGoohan played in 86 episodes. At around this time, he turned down the chance to play James Bond in the first Bond movie, Dr No, seeing the Bond character as a stock gunman who treated women badly.
In 1968, when The Prisoner series was ending, McGoohan left Mill Hill, north London, to live in Switzerland after the local council refused him permission to fence his house off from prying eyes. In 1973 he moved to Pacific Palisades in California. There he wrote poetry, a novel and television scripts. He appeared in, wrote or directed some of the Columbo films in which his American friend Peter Falk appeared as the deceptively ruffled detective.
This redoubtable enemy of dumbing-down remained a highly individual operator into the 1990s. In 1991 he came to London to make the TV version of Whitemore’s play The Best of Friends, in which he played with considerable plausibility and élan another Irishman not frightened to swim against the tide, George Bernard Shaw. In 1995 he was cast as Edward I in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.
In 2000, he provided the voice of Number Six for an episode of The Simpsons, and gained his last film credit in 2002 as the voice of Billy Bones in Treasure Planet. A proposed film version of The Prisoner has yet to make it to the screen, but a remake of the TV show has recently been filmed by ITV, with the US actor James Caviezel as Number Six, and is due to be transmitted later this year.
McGoohan is survived by his wife, three daughters and five grandchildren.
Patrick Joseph McGoohan, actor, writer and director, born 19 March 1928; died 13 January 2009
• This article was amended on Thursday 15 January 2009. Portmeirion is in north, not south, Wales. This has been corrected.
Dennis Barker’s obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.
Bernadette O’Farrell was born in Birr, Co Offaly in Ireland in 1924. She auditioned for and won a small part in the Frank Lauder film “Captain Boycott” in 1947. She later married Frank Lauder. She gained international recognition in the 1950’s for her role as Maid Marian to Richard Greene’s Robin Hood on television’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. The series was a huge success in Britain and the U.S. She acted occasionally on film and her last movie was “The Bridal Path” in 1959. She retired to Monaco with her husband and she died there in 1999. Her obituary in “Variety” can be accessed here.
Although often seen in the St. Trinian’s movies, written by Sidney Gilliat and her husband, Frank Launder, it was her role as Maid Marian in the long-running Robin Hood series that catapulted her to stardom. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955) became one of the first British Television programs to succeed in the United States, having over 30 million viewers. O’Farrell left the series in 1957 despite receiving thousands of letters asking her to stay. She was born in Birr, County Offaly, Ireland, in 1926. Her father was a bank teller, and her mother was an amateur actress. After being educated at a local convent, she was working as a secretary when she was invited to an audition by Sir Carol Reed.
Through Reed, she met Frank Launder, who gave her a small part inCaptain Boycott (1947) opposite Stewart Granger. After several movies, including Launder’s St. Trinian’s series, some stage work and Robin Hood, she starred in her last movie, The Bridal Path (1959) in 1959. She retired from acting to spend time with her family on their farm in Buckinghamshire, England, UK. She and Launder were married in 1950 and had two daughters. They would later move to Monaco and become active in local charities and stage productions. While living in Monaco, Frank suffered a serious stroke in 1989 and, finally, a fatal heart attack in 1997. Bernadette O’Farrell died on September 29, 1999, after battling with cancer.
In the mid-1950s, Bernadette O’Farrell was one of the best-known Irish actresses in the world. As Maid Marion in the television series The Adventures of Robin Hood, she was watched by an estimated 30 million people each week. She gave up the role after two years when shopkeepers started addressing her as Maid Marion.
The daughter of a bank manager, she was born in Birr, Co Offaly, on January 30th, 1924, and educated at a local convent.
She was working as a solicitor’s clerk when the film director Carol Reed, a friend of the family, suggested she audition for producers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. They had set up a film unit in Ireland to make Captain Boycott, a film based on the tenant farmers’ revolt of 1880.
The result was the part of the wife of a farmer (Liam Gaffney), who joins others to ostracise the ruthless landlord, Boycott. When the landlord, defeated, leaves Ireland, the local priest advises the community to “boycott” anyone else who tries to do them harm, thus bringing the word into the English language.
Launder later commented, “It was a fascinating and memorable film to make, and I met a lot of marvellous people on it, including my wife”.
He married Bernadette O’Farrell in 1950, and in the same year cast her in The Happiest Days Of Your Life, which told of the hilarious results of a group of girls being mistakenly billeted at a boys’ school.
Among other films were Lady in the Fog (1952) in which she co-starred, helping a reporter (Hollywood actor, Cesar Romero) track the killer of her brother; The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953), as a member of the D’Oyly Carte company; and The Square Ring (1953), as the wife of an ageing boxer attempting a comeback.
But it was her casting in the Robin Hood series in 1955 which made her a household name, as she pluckily helped her sweetheart thwart the plans of his arch enemy the Sheriff of Nottingham. The high-quality scripts, many written under pseudonyms by blacklisted American writers, and the show’s theme tune (“Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen . . .”) were other elements in the show’s success. Its popularity in America led to a tour of the country by Bernadette O’Farrell and her co-star Richard Greene in 1956. Three years later she retired to raise her two daughters on the family farm in Buckinghamshire, and on her husband’s retirement, the couple moved to Monaco. Frank Launder died in 1997.
Bernadette O’Farrell is survived by her two daughters.
Aine Ni Mhuiri is an Irish actress best known for her role in the long-running “Ballykissangel” on television. She has made a number of films shot on location in Ireland. She was very poignant as the lonely Edie Marinan friend of Maggie Smith in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”. Her page o “The Agency” website can be viewed here.
Ruby Murray was born in Belfast in 1935. She was one of the singing sensations on the British popular music scene in the mid-1950’s. In 1955 she had five Top Twenty Hits in the British charts at the same time. Her most famous song was “Softly, Softly”. Ruby Murray was known as the girl with a tear in her voice. She was the leading lady to comedian Frankie Howard in the film “The Runaway Bus”. It did not lead on to a film career of any consequence. She died at the age of 61 in 1996. In rhyming cockney slang a “Ruby Murray” means a curry.
Roby Murray’s obituary by Tom Vallance:
Ruby Murray’s huskily girlish voice, its plaintive tunefulness enhanced by an involuntary catch in the throat, took the pop world by storm in the mid-Fifties and made the young Irish singer one of the most successful stars in the history of British popular music.
Her hesitant, shy quality gave her that touch of amateurism which the British public loves, while the intimate huskiness of her delivery added sex appeal. She set a pop-chart record by having five hits in the Top Twenty at one time (a feat equalled only by Elvis Presley and Madonna), while her name has entered British folklore as rhyming slang for “curry”. Her private life, though, was not happy and blighted by the chronic alcoholism that caused her death.
Born in 1935 in Belfast to a Scottish father and an Irish mother, Murray had an operation for swollen glands when she was six weeks old which left her with an unusually husky voice. A childhood visit to see the minstrel performer G.H. Elliott at the music-hall inspired her to join a children’s choir, and soon she was performing solo. When she was 12 she made her professional debut on Irish television and two years later, with her mother as chaperone, she was touring in variety.
Over the next five years she appeared in revues throughout Ireland and Scotland. When her touring show Yankee Doodle Blarney played at the Metropolitan Music Hall in London in 1954, the television producer Richard Afton, who had been responsible for her Irish television appearance as a child, spotted her again and signed her to succeed Joan Regan as resident singer in his television series Quite Contrary.
Murray’s first appearance on the show prompted the record producer Ray Martin to give her a contract with Columbia Records. Her second release, “Heartbeat”, went to No 2 in the charts, and was followed by the song which was to become her signature tune, “Softly, Softly” (by Pierre Dudan, Paddy Roberts and Mark Paul), a No 1 hit and a sensational success. While these two songs were in the Top Twenty, three more hits followed in rapid succession, “Happy Days and Lonely Nights”, “If Anyone Finds This, I Love You”, and “Evermore”. The same year (1955) readers of the New Musical Express voted her Britain’s favourite female vocalist (she received over 1,000 votes more than her nearest rival Alma Cogan), Bernard Delfont signed her to co-star with Norman Wisdom at the London Palladium in the revue Painting the Town, and she appeared in the Royal Variety Show.
The following year she was heard on screen singing “You Are My First Love” in It’s Great to be Young, had an acting role as a chambermaid in the Frankie Howerd comedy A Touch of the Sun, and made the first of two successful tours of the United States. Though she was to have two more modest record hits, “Goodbye, Jimmy, Goodbye” (1959) and “Change Your Mind” (1970), and continued to headline variety bills in the provinces for another two decades, her career was never to reach such a peak again, while problems in her personal life plus the stresses of her career prompted addiction to both alcohol and valium.
She married her first husband, Bernard Burgess, of the close harmony group the Jones Boys, in 1957, and in 1962 they started a year-long tour of Britain in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When Murray fell in love with the comedian Frank Carson, who was both married and a Roman Catholic, the stresses it put on her marriage increased her reliance on alcohol. She joined Alcoholics Anonymous and twice spent time in a psychiatric hospital after nervous breakdowns. When she and Burgess divorced in 1977, he alleged that she was prone to physical violence and he was awarded custody of their two children Julie and Tim (now the singer Tim Murray).
The same year Murray began living with Ray Lamar, a theatrical manager for Bernard Delfont, and in 1993 they were married. Though it was a loving relationship, the chronic alcoholism persisted, despite repeated attempts by Murray to stop. (When she did stop, she would smoke 80 cigarettes a day.) In 1982 she was arrested and fined for being drunk and disorderly – she spent a night in a cell and is alleged to have entertained the police with her hit songs. Still fondly remembered, she received a standing ovation in 1985 when she appeared in the concert Forty Years of Peace in the presence of Princess Anne, but her final London appearance, at Brick Lane Music Hall in March 1993, revealed a frail, halting performer.
For the last two years she had totally given up drinking, but her liver had become irreparably damaged and for the eight months until her death she was a patient in a nursing home. The LBC broadcaster Lee Stevens, her manager for 12 years, said, “She gave happiness to millions of people, but sadly she never found real happiness herself.”
Ruby Florence Campbell Murray, singer: born Belfast 29 March 1935; married 1957 Bernard Burgess (one son, one daughter; marriage dissolved 1977), 1993 Ray Lamar; died Torquay, Devon 17 December 1996.
Saoirse Ronan is an Irish actress who was born in 1994. She is best known for her roles in “Atonement” and “Lovely Bones”. She lives in Co. Carlow. “Independent” article on Saoirse Ronan can be accessed here.
After a distinguished London stage career, Campbell entered film in the mid-1940s. She received positive notices internationally for her performances in Silent Dust (1949) and Last Holiday (1950), with Alec Guinness, which remains her best-known role.
Campbell was married twice. Her first marriage was to Squadron Leader Michael Robert MacClancy of No. 226 Squadron RAF, who died aged 22, on 12 April 1942 at RAF Hemswell when his aircraft crash landed.
Her second marriage was to the actor Nigel Patrick in 1951. They remained married until her death in 1979.
Patrick Bergin has been on over 80 film and television programmes. One of his best remembered roles was as Julia Robert’s menancing husband in “Sleeping With the Enemy”. He first came to international public attention as Sir Richard Burton the explorer in “Mountains of the Moon” with Fiona Shaw. He was very effective as Kevin O’Donnell in “The Patriot Games”. He is currently playing ‘Jim Larkin’ the great Irish trade union leader in the film “Connolly”. “Daily Mail” interview with Patrick Bergin can be accessed here.
TCM Overview:
Tall, dark-haired, dashing Irish lead who, after a career as a teacher of juvenile delinquents and children with learning disabilities, turned to full-time acting in 1980. Bergin came to prominence as 19th-century explorer Sir Richard Burton in Bob Rafelson’s “Mountains of the Moon” (1990) and as Julia Roberts’ compulsively tidy, psychopathic husband in “Sleeping With the Enemy” (1991). He portrayed a similarly seductive psycho–a con artist who seduces women by pretending to be a famous photographer–in Lizzie Borden’s 1992 thriller “Love Crimes.” Bergin’s classic good looks made him a natural to play the title character in the TV movie “Robin Hood” (1991).
Patrick Bergin. TCM Overview
Patrick Bergin
Patrick Bergin has been on over 80 film and television programmes. One of his best remembered roles was as Julia Robert’s menancing husband in “Sleeping With the Enemy”. He first came to international public attention as Sir Richard Burton the explorer in “Mountains of the Moon” with Fiona Shaw. He was very effective as Kevin O’Donnell in “The Patriot Games”. He is currently playing ‘Jim Larkin’ the great Irish trade union leader in the film “Connolly”. “Daily Mail” interview with Patrick Bergin can be accessed here.
Patrick Bergin
TCM Overview:
Tall, dark-haired, dashing Irish lead who, after a career as a teacher of juvenile delinquents and children with learning disabilities, turned to full-time acting in 1980.
Bergin came to prominence as 19th-century explorer Sir Richard Burton in Bob Rafelson’s “Mountains of the Moon” (1990) and as Julia Roberts’ compulsively tidy, psychopathic husband in “Sleeping With the Enemy” (1991). He portrayed a similarly seductive psycho–a con artist who seduces women by pretending to be a famous photographer–in Lizzie Borden’s 1992 thriller “Love Crimes.” Bergin’s classic good looks made him a natural to play the title character in the TV movie “Robin Hood” (1991).
Jimmy O’Dea was born at 11 Lower Bridge Street, Dublin, to James O’Dea, an ironmonger, and Martha O’Gorman, who kept a small toy shop in 1899.[1] He was one of 11 children. His father had a shop in Capel Street. He was educated at the Irish Christian BrothersO’Connell School in North Richmond Street, Dublin, where a classmate was future TaoiseachSeán Lemass, by the Holy Ghost Fathers at Blackrock College, and by the Jesuits at Belvedere College. From a young age he was interested in taking to the stage; he co-founded an amateur acting group, the Kilronan Players, in 1917. But his father would not hear of it. O’Dea was apprenticed to an optician in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he qualified as an optician.
He returned to Dublin where, aged 21, he set up his own business which he was, eventually, to give to his sister, Rita. In his spare time he took part in amateur productions of Ibsen and Chekhov. From 1920 he was in the Irish theatre in Hardwicke Street working with actor-producer John McDonagh. After working in plays by Shaw for a few years he rejoined McDonagh in revues, the first of which, Dublin To-Night, was produced at the Queen’s Theatre in 1924. In 1927 he took to the stage full-time. In 1928, this company’s first production Here We Are won international acclaim, and in December of the same year it produced its first Christmas Pantomime, Sinbad the Sailor.
O’Dea formed a partnership with Harry O’Donovan (died 3 November 1973) whom he first met in a production of You Never Can Tell in 1924. Their first show was Look Who’s Here at Queen’s. For more than two decades beginning in 1929 the duo produced two shows a year in Dublin, first in the Olympia Theatre, then in the Gaiety. They created O’Dea’s most famous character, “Mrs. Biddy Mulligan”. The role drew on Jimmy’s previous manifestations as “Dames” in Variety performances and pantomimes. Biddy Mulligan was the representation (caricature, parody and stereotype) of a Dublin street-seller, with all the working-class repartee, wisdom and failings implicit. He made a number of recordings of sketches starring Mrs. Mulligan.[5] Biddy Mulligan is referenced in many Dublin music hall songs such as “Biddy Mulligan the Pride of the Coombe“, “Daffy the Belle of the Coombe” and “The Charladies’ Ball“.
O’Dea made some film appearances, such as Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) in which he played King Brian of the little people and Johnny Nobody (1961). He also had a successful career in pantomime and toured Ireland and England many times, and is much associated with actress Maureen Potter (1925-2004), with whom he often partnered.
O’Dea was also a prolific songwriter in his day. Many of his songs are still well known to this day, some of them having been sung and recorded by Dublin singer Frank Harte.
O’Dea married Ursula Doyle. Maureen Potter was bridesmaid. Seán Lemass was best-man; he would also give the valedictory oration at O’Dea’s funeral in 1965. Jimmy O’Dea had one child – Christine O’Dea – who married Ursula Doyle’s brother Noel Doyle. Christine lives in Toronto.
O’Dea, James Augustine (‘Jimmy’) (1899–1965), actor and comedian, was born 26 April 1899 at 11 Lower Bridge St., Dublin, over his parents’ toyshop in the historic but dilapidated Liberties. Both parents, twice-widowed James O’Dea and his third wife, Martha (née O’Gorman), former assistant to O’Dea’s widowed sister who had willed him the shop, were from Kilkenny. Of their eight Dublin-born children, four sons (of whom James, or ‘Jim’, was the last) and two daughters survived. Four daughters of the previous marriages had moved away, while a son, Ciarán, remained at home. James O’Dea placed the toyshop under his wife’s control while he earned his living, first at Henshaw’s ironmongery in nearby Christchurch Place, and from 1896 at his own ironmongery at 21 Christchurch Place. Young Jim, diminutive and good-natured but unscholarly, attended a succession of schools: Holy Faith Convent, Dominick St.; Holy Faith boarding school, Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow; Belvedere College, Dublin; the Marist boarding school, Dundalk; back to Dublin at Blackrock College; and finally St Mary’s College, Rathmines. In 1908 his father’s business had relocated north of the Liffey to 162 Capel St., and the family to 21 Grosvenor Place, Rathmines.
Passion for the theatre inspired Jim O’Dea above all else. He joined the Kilronan Players, formed c.1917 by Capel St. friend and future politician Seán Lemass (qv). In that year they performed at the Father Mathew Hall, Church St., in T. C. Murray‘s (qv) ‘Maurice Harte’ and William Boyle‘s (qv) ‘The mineral workers’. O’Dea appeared in further productions and obtained small roles at the Abbey Theatre. His father declared he would sooner see him in a coffin than on the stage and arranged that he become an optician. Jim served his time with John Murray of Duke St., who tried to cure his insatiable dramatic appetite by quoting him the antiquated apprenticeship regulations against frequenting alehouses and theatres. O’Dea risked instant dismissal. Instead, Murray transferred him to his brother’s practice in Edinburgh. Duly qualifying in 1921, James A. O’Dea opened his Dublin practice in South Frederick St., moving later to Nassau St., and transferring it to his sister Rita when he opted for the stage.
Edinburgh aside, he had remained firmly attached to Dublin’s theatre world with parts at the short-lived Irish Theatre established by Edward Martyn (qv) at Hardwicke St., including a small role (1918) in Ibsen’s ‘Enemy of the people’ and later (1920) as Firs in Chekhov’s ‘The cherry orchard’. In November 1920 he was at the Abbey in Lord Dunsany‘s (qv) ‘The laughter of the gods’. In September 1921 he returned in ‘You never can tell’ by George Bernard Shaw (qv). Edging closer to becoming ‘Ireland’s greatest comedian’ he filled the title role in John MacDonagh’s contemporary political satire ‘The Irish Jew’ at the Empire (later Olympia) and Queen’s Theatres (1921–3). In 1924 MacDonagh placed him in the pioneering Irish revue ‘Dublin tonight’. O’Dea marked time in straight theatre with the Kilronan Players and their comedy offshoot, the Sandabs. He was best man at Seán Lemass’s wedding in 1924.
Comedy prevailed when O’Dea collaborated with Harry O’Donovan (qv), actor, producer, and scriptwriter. In 1927 they formed O’D Productions, an initially informal variety scriptwriting/performance company whose first production, ‘We’re here’ (1928), was acclaimed at the Queen’s and Olympia, as well as the Palace Theatre, Cork. At Christmas 1928 their first pantomime, ‘Sinbad the sailor’, played at the Olympia. O’Dea adopted the permanent stage name ‘Jimmy O’Dea’ and his leading female character, ‘Biddy Mulligan, the Pride of the Coombe’, Dublin’s most opinionated and resourceful street-trader, evolved from earlier ‘dame’ acts on which he and O’Donovan worked. With her eponymous comic anthem Biddy Mulligan became forever identified with O’Dea’s variety stage persona.
If Biddy Mulligan won him popular fame and children’s hero status in pantomime, silent cinema had discovered O’Dea in 1922. He starred in three films for the newly formed Irish Photo-Plays Ltd: ‘The Casey millions’, ‘Cruiskeen lawn’, and ‘Wicklow gold’ were directed in Ireland by John MacDonagh. O’Dea returned to the screen with British directors in the years 1935–9. By then his comedy stage career in Dublin, Cork, and Belfast had flourished as O’Donovan’s (and MacDonagh’s) scripts replaced traditional anglocentric humour and allusions with local and topical references, enhanced by O’Dea’s notorious ad-libbing. In September 1930 his British career began, playing an Irish emigrant in ‘Micky breaks into America’ at the London Coliseum. Several film roles and much radio, e.g. ‘Irish half-hour’ and ‘Over to Mulligan’s’ on BBC Home and Forces wartime and postwar programmes, extended his fame. In Ireland, while Maurice (qv) and Louis Elliman (qv) practically controlled variety theatre and film, O’Dea relied on these interests, especially their Queen’s, Gaiety, and Royal Theatres, to outlast the contest between stage and screen. The Ellimans never failed O’Dea, literally to the day he died.
He had also acquired a permanent and seemingly ageless comedy partner in Maureen Potter (1925–2004), a female alter ego active with O’D Productions since the late 1930s. Boosted in these relationships and by Harry O’Donovan’s loyalty, Jimmy O’Dea remained central to Irish comedy in the 1950s and early 1960s. As cinema closed some theatres and television threatened the rest, O’Dea overcame these dangers: perfectly cast in Hollywood by Walt Disney as leprechaun King Brian in Darby O’Gill and the little people (1959). He enthralled young children as the storyteller on fledgling Irish television’s ‘Once upon a time’; he had broadcast on national radio since its inception in 1926.
O’Dea married first (1925) Bernadette, daughter of Dublin publican Bernard Fagan; after her death he married secondly (1959) Ursula, daughter of Edward and Josephine Doyle of Tara St., Dublin. Terminally ill in 1964, O’Dea resolved to fulfil his obligations before he died, leaving Dr Steevens’ Hospital over Christmas to attend a tribute to Micheál MacLiammóir (qv) and complete a Christmas television programme at his home, 75 Pembroke Road. Returning to hospital (after attending the Gaiety pantomime), he died 7 January 1965 with Louis Elliman in attendance. Much loved and widely mourned, he was buried in Glasnevin cemetery.
Sources
Times, 19 Sept. 1930, 2 May 1936; Leader, 7 Apr. 1945; Ir. Times, 8 Jan. 1965; Maurice Gorham, Forty years of Irish broadcasting(1967); Brian de Breffny, Ireland: a cultural encyclopaedia (1983), 171; Brian McIlroy, Irish cinema: an illustrated history (1988); Philip B. Ryan, Jimmy O’Dea, the pride of the Coombe (1990); Philip B. Ryan, Noel Purcell: a biography (1992); Michael O’Sullivan, Seán Lemass: a biography (1994); Kevin Rockett (ed.), The Irish filmography: fiction films 1896–1996 (1996)
Beginning her acting career in Dublin, Brennan appeared in many of the major theatres including the Gate Theatre, the Abbey Theatreand the Gaiety Theatre, as well as touring community centres with Moving Theatre.
In 1999, Brennan played Maisie Madigan in Pearson’s production of Juno and the Paycock at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, alongside Michael Gambon whom she had previously appeared with in the 1998 film adaptation of Dancing at Lughnasa. In 2002, Brennan was again nominated for an Olivier award for her performance in the Donmar Warehouse‘s 2001 production of The Little Foxes. In 2006, she starred as Sister Aloysius in a production of Doubt at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
Brennan featured as a guest star in the British television series Cracker in 1995 as a prostitute-hating killer in the episode “Brotherly Love”. Coincidentally, she co-starred in this particular episode with fellow Irish actor Lorcan Cranitch, with whom she would later co-star in Dancing at Lughnasa. Brennan also acted in the much acclaimed Billy trilogy of plays for the BBC Play for Today series with fellow Belfast natives Sir Kenneth Branagh and James Ellis.
On Saturday 31st October 1992 Bríd Brennan starred in the infamous BBC One’s Screen One Halloween drama “Ghostwatch” alongside Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles. This ghost story written by Stephen Volk, was produced in the style of a live television broadcast from an alleged haunted house in North London. She appeared as the mother of the house Pamela Early who along with her two young daughters were experiencing paranormal events in their house. The drama caused uproar in the UK, with many feeling it was a hoax, designed to let the viewers think it was a real, live show and not a drama. However it did make Brennan become well known, as 11 million viewers tuned into “Ghostwatch” on that Halloween night of 1992.
Brennan gave an award-winning performance in 2012’s Shadow Dancer, winning an IFTA for her role as Ma. According to the director James Marsh, the fact that she had grown up in West Belfast during the Troubles was significant as by casting Irish actors “it felt that they knew this world better than I did and I felt they could help me and guide me”.
For RTÉ Radio 1, Brennan played the role of Lucia Joyce in Thomas Kilroy‘s In the Garden of the Asylum in 2009.
Sorcha Cusack is the second daughter on the Cusack dynasty. Her father was Cyril Cusack and her older sister Sinead and younger sister Niamh are all actresses. At the start of her career Sorcha obtained a breakthrough role in the title role of “Jane Eyre” for television. She has worked in all themajor television series in the UK over the past 25 years. She recently was in “Coronation Street” as Helen Connor. Ar article on Ms Cusack on the “Coronation St” website can be seen here. She left the series because of conflicting schedules and was replaced by Dearbhla Molloy. In “Snatch” she amazingly played the mother of Brad Pitt.
Geoffrey Toone obituary in “The Guardian” in 2010.
The actor Geoffrey Toone, who has died aged 94, came from a theatrical generation that was expected to behave a little larger than life, both on or off the stage, in the days almost before talking pictures – let alone television – caught the public imagination.
Geoffrey Toone
Not that he ever went about like an old actor-laddie, even though he had the physique to carry it off. Tall, lean, elegant, with a noble profile, clarity of diction and resonance of voice which never had to strive for audibility, Toone moved effortlessly from theatre to film and back again, toning his acting down to suit the screen. He had learned his craft early when he played at the Old Vic in its heyday, under Lilian Baylis.
As a character actor in demand for more than 70 years, he had few rivals in the representation of well-bred dignity, social pomposity and self-assurance;he had a way of bringing to life judges, cardinals, diplomats and aristocrats even when they appeared merely wooden on the page.
Geoffrey Toone
Toone was said to have brought an “almost Chekhovian sadness” to an elderly general in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (Duke of York’s, 1987); and in 1989, when he himself was nearly 80, he acted “beautifully” as another critic put it, in Shadowlands (Queen’s), playing CS Lewis’s brother, Major Lewis.
Among Toone’s long list of West End credits were Kurt von Obersdorf, in Sinclair Lewis’s Dodsworth (Palace, 1938); Lord Windermere, in John Gielgud’s revival of Lady Windermere’s Fan (Haymarket, 1945); a stranger who ensnared both males, in Andre Roussin’s romantic farce, The Little Hut (Lyric, 1950); a customer who got Beatrice Lillie the sack, in Auntie Mame (AdeIphi, 1958); Sir Lucius O’Trigger to Margaret Rutherford’s Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals (Haymarket, 1966); Major Wimbourne, and later Colonel Strang, in Barry England’s Conduct Unbecoming (Queen’s, 1970).
Of his Hollywood films, the Carol Reed thriller The Man Between (1953), The King And I (1956) and Once More With Feeling (1960) were perhaps his best, although he also appeared in the Douglas Sirk drama Captain Lightfoot (1955) and with Laurence Olivier in Tony Richardson’s acclaimed 1960 film, The Entertainer.
Geoffrey Toone
Toone was born in Dublin and educated at Charterhouse school and Christ’s College, Cambridge. After walking on in several Old Vic productions in 1931, he got his first speaking part as Peter of Pomfret, in King John, at Sadler’s Wells, which Baylis had just added to the Old Vic as an alternative base for the classics.
After stints at the Oxford Playhouse and the Malvern Festival Theatre, he joined Gielgud’s company at the New theatre in 1934, as Fortinbras to Gielgud’s Hamlet and Tybalt in Romeo And Juliet. The latter was a legendary production because Gielgud alternated Romeo with Olivier to Peggy Ashcroft’s Juliet.
Returning to the West End just before the second world war, and after two seasons at Liverpool Playhouse, Toone was impressive in Dodsworth. During the war, he served in the Royal Artillery, but was invalided out in 1942. On his return to the West End, he acted with the great American couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, in Lillian Hellman’s Watch On The Rhine (Aldwych). In 1944, he was Laertes to Robert Helpmann’s Hamlet (New) and then a stately Windermere in the sumptuous, first-ever revival of Lady Windermere’s Fan.
He made his Broadway debut in 1948 as Banquo to Michael Redgrave’s much-respected Macbeth, returning to the Old Vic as Orsino in Twelfth Night (1950). That was the year he made something richly exotic of the cruise ship’s cook who was mistaken for a native in Peter Brook’s long-running production of The Little Hut.
In 1953, Toone moved to Hollywood for five years to work in films and television; on his return, he played an American millionaire, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside, in the Beatrice Lillie musical comedy, Auntie Mame (Adelphi). He then joined the Bristol Old Vic, toured Europe as the Constable of France in Henry V, and returned to the West End as an authentically Irish Sir Lucius O’Trigger in The Rivals (Haymarket, 1966).
Three years later, he played the sardonic Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler (Phoenix, Leicester, 1969) before turning to a decade-long run of army roles. First came Barry England’s Conduct Unbecoming (Queen’s), then the Colonel in the same accomplished author’s second success, End Of Conflict, and, in 1973, with the Bristol Old Vic, the Colonel in Journey’s End. In Toronto four years later, he strutted and boomed as Colonel Julyan in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
Geoffrey Toone
Toone’s favourite part? Nothing to do with old soldiers; not even a classical role. It was that of an ageing, affectionate Soviet medical superviser in Aleksei Arbuzov’s Old-World (Northcott, Exeter, 1978) who fell in love with one of his patients.
He never married.
· Geoffrey Toone, actor, born November 15 1910; died June 1 2005
. His obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here. .
Joe Lynch was born in Cork in 1925. he was an actor and also a fine singer. He made several popular recordings including “The Whistling Gypsy” by Leo Maguire and “The Banks of my own lovely Lee”. He was very popular on Rsdio Eireann in the 1950’s with his show “Living with Lynch”. In 1968 he starred in the British sit com “Never Mind the Quality, Feel thw Width”. He did a stint on”Corination Street” as a taxi boyfriend of Elsie Tanner. He then had a very long stretch as Dinny Byrne on RTE’s “Bracken” and then “Glenroe”. Joe Lynch died in Spain in 2001.
“Guardian” obituary:
The actor, singer and raconteur Joe Lynch, who has died aged 75, became famous in his native Ireland playing the wily farmer and greyhound breeder Dinny Byrne in the RTE soap opera Glenroe from 1983 to 2000. It was a role he had pioneered in another RTE series, Bracken, from 1978.
But in Britain, he was best known as as one half of an Irish-Jewish tailoring twosome in the late 60s ITV comedy series Never Mind the Quality… Feel The Width. And uniquely, he played two characters – a county councillor and Elsie Tanner’s boyfriend – in Coronation Street. His more than a dozen films included the part of Blazes Boylan in Joseph Strick’s 1967 movie of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The son of an engine driver and a bookbinder, he was born in Mallow, Co Cork, and educated at North Monastery Christian Brothers School in Cork City before graduating in music from Blackrock College, Dublin. He joined the Loft, a house in Cork city which specialised in rendering Shakespeare’s plays to devoted audiences, and his acting career began with the touring theatre of rural Ireland, whose menu was “an hour drama and an hour variety”. It was a forcing-house of talent which drew on the rich Elizabethan inheritance of Munster, whose sources were in Spenser and the Bible and latterly in such luminaries of local literature as Daniel Corkery and Frank O’Connor, and straight acting had to be accompanied with an ability to turn a tune.
Lynch made classics of such ballads as My Own Lovely Lee, The Stone Outside Dan Murphy’s Door, and The Wandering Gypsy, a song which seemed to reflect his own rich, diverse and adventurous per sonality. He developed a keen ability to hold an audience, often in trying conditions. His singing voice won him a following among Irish radio listeners. His ear for dialect landed him a radio series, Living with Lynch – and he became a comedian and satirist.
It was in the late 1960s that he moved to England. A failed film venture was to cost him dear – he spent three years stomping the boards in working-men’s clubs in the north of England to pay back his creditors – and he returned to Ireland in the early 1980s.
Lynch retired to Spain three years ago. He is survived by his wife, a daughter and his son. The death of another daughter earlier this year badly shook him.
Joseph Lynch, actor, born July 16 1926; died August 1 2001
His obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.
Ray McAnally was born in Buncrana in Co Donegal in 1926. He became a member of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1947. He played oppostine Constance Cummings in the London production of “Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf” as George and garnered very favourable reviews for his searing performance. He made many television performances over the next few years. In 1986 he gave a tremendous performance as Altamirano the Cardinal in Roland Joffe’s “The Mission” opposite Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. He followed this two years later with another forceful performance with Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker in “My Left Foot”. He won great acclaim for television’s “A Very British Coup”. He died suddenly at the age of 63 jst as he was getting into his stride as a major figure in international cinema.
Article from “The Donegal Diaspora”:
Born on 30th March 1926 in Buncrana, Co. Donegal, Ray McAnally was educated at Saint Eunan’s college, Letterkenny. During his time there, he wrote, produced and staged a musical called ‘Madame Screwball’. Upon leaving, Ray entered the seminary but left again a short time after. In 1947 he joined the Abbey Theatre where he met and married actress Ronnie Masterson. Together they formed Old Quay Productions, putting on an array of classic plays throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
He made a triumphant London theatre debut in 1962 with “A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers” and was cast as George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opposite legendary British actress, Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre. He routinely acted in the Abbey and at various Irish festivals, achieving award-winning notice on TV and films in the last decade of his life. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film “The Mission” (1986) earned him Evening Standard and BAFTA awards. His role in the BBC production of “A Perfect Spy”(1987) also earned him a BAFTA award.
In the last year of his life, McAnally portrayed the role of Daniel Day-Lewis’ father in the Academy Award-winning film “My Left Foot” (1989). McAnally died suddenly of a heart attack on June 15th of that year and received a posthumous BAFTA award for this, his last movie. McAnally had four children; Conor, Aonghus, Máire and Niamh.
Growing up in an atmosphere of theatre and television, it was quite natural that Ray’s children would follow him into the entertainment industry. Ray’s son, Conor is a professional television producer/director with 30 years experience in music and television programming. He has been Director, Producer, Writer or Executive Producer of more than 2000 show episodes in a wide range of genres . His shows have won 22 major awards including 5 British Academy Awards and 3 from the Royal Television Society
Ray’s son Aonghus is a well known TV presenter and personality in Ireland, working on various renowned RTÉ TV and radio productions including ‘Anything Goes” and “The Lyrics Board”. The brothers recollect that summer caravan holidays on Shrove beach in Co. Donegal were very special: ‘playing on the sand dunes was a thrill as an innocent 8 year old!’says Aonghus.
One summer Conor was featured on the John Hinde postcard of the harbour in Moville. Aonghus jokes that for years he has resented the fact that Conor never called him to be in the picture, despite the fact he was only around the corner. Due to hectic work schedules and geography, both brothers regret that they are not able to visit Donegal more often but when they do, Aonghus claims that they have a definite sense of feeling closer to their father:
‘Whenever I am there I feel his spirit around me. We are all formed by our memories of parents and Donegal was a pivotal part of who and what he was… If it’s your county or your people’s county then when you touch the soil under foot then you are home. Simple as that!’.
This article from “The Donegal Diaspora” can also be accessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Although Irish character actor Ray McAnally would become one of his country’s most revered stage actors, he will be forever remembered by audiences both here and abroad for a couple of films he made during the last years of his life. Born in the seaside town of Buncrana and the son of a bank manager, he was educated at St. Eunan’s College and entered a seminary at the age of 18. Lucky for us stage and filmgoers, the priesthood proved not to be his calling, and he departed after only a brief time. He joined the Abbey Theatre in 1947 where he met and married actress Ronnie Masterson. They would later form Old Quay Productions and present an assortment of classic plays in the 60s and 70s. He made a triumphant London theatre debut in 1962 with “A Nice Bunch of Cheap Flowers” and gave a towering performance as George in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” opposite legendary British actress, Constance Cummings, at the Piccadilly Theatre. He routinely acted in the Abbey and Irish festivals, but then, in the last decade of life, achieved award-winning notice on TV and films. His impressive performance as Cardinal Altamirano in the film The Mission (1986) earned him Evening Standard and BAFTA awards. His role in the BBC production of A Perfect Spy (1987) also earned him a BAFTA award. In the last year of his life, he was absolutely awe-inspiring as Daniel Day-Lewis’ father in the Academy Award-winning film _My Left Foot (1989)_, the story of cerebral palsy victim Christy Brown, who overcame his severe disability to become a flourishing artist and writer. McAnally died suddenly of a heart attack on June 15th of that year and received a posthumous BAFTA award for this last movie in 1990. A fitting end to a versatile, galvanizing talent.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Seamus Gubbins hails from Castleconnell in Co Limerick and was born in 1965. . He is perhaps best known for his role as Ray Mullen on television’s long-running “Emmerdale”. He has many other British television appearances to his credit including “Doctors”, “Taggert” and “Waterloo Road”. He was a merchant banker for four years before leaving the job and going to drama school in Glasgow. Link for “Emmerdale” profile can be accessed here.
Hurd Hatfield was born in 1917 in New York City. He came to fame with his role in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” with Angela Lansbury. His other roles include “El Cid”, “King of Kings” and “The Boston Strangler”. He lived in Ireland and died there in 1998.
The Diary of a Chambermaid
The Left Handed Gun
El Cid
The Boston Strangler
Crimes of the Heart
King of Kings
Destination Murder
The Picture of Dorian Gray
His obituary by Tom Vallance in “The Independent”:
THE ACTOR Hurd Hatfield will always be associated with the film role that made him a star, that of the aesthetic young man who remains youthful through the years while a portrait of himself in the attic displays the aberrations of his life, in MGM’s film version of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
He would later say, however, that the role was a curse as well as a blessing, for within five years he was appearing in B movies, and throughout the rest of his life he would be associated with that single role, despite a long and varied career in film, television and particularly theatre. “I have been haunted by The Picture of Dorian Gray,” he said. “New York, London, anywhere I’m making a personal appearance, people will talk about other things but they always get back to Dorian Gray.” Coincidentally, until recently Hatfield’s appearance remained remarkably youthful, and he became accustomed to being asked if he kept a painting of himself in his attic.
He was born William Rukard Hurd Hatfield in New York City in 1918. He won a scholarship to study acting at Michael Chekhov’s Dartington Hall company in Devon, England, and made his professional debut in the spring of 1939 playing the Baron in scenes from The Lower Depths at the company’s theatre. Returning to the United States with Chekhov’s company, he toured as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Caleb Plummer in Cricket on the Hearth, and Gloucester in King Lear, before making his Broadway debut as Kirilov in The Possessed (1939).
This adaptation of several Dostoevsky works into one sombre 15-scene play ran for only 14 performances, with both the acting and Chekhov’s direction deemed excessively stylised. While the company was playing on the West Coast, Hatfield was signed by MGM and cast as Lao San in the studio’s 1944 adaptation of Pearl Buck’s epic novel Dragon Seed, about the effect of Japanese invasion on a family of Chinese farmers. “That was some experience,” said Hatfield later. “A nightmare! Walter Huston was my father, Katharine Hepburn my sister, Aline MacMahon from New York my mother, Turkish Turhan Bey my brother, Russian Akim Tamiroff my uncle – it was a very odd Chinese family!”
Hatfield then auditioned for the role of vain young sensualist who trades his soul for eternal youth in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). “Oscar Wilde’s original Dorian is blond and blue-eyed,” he said later, “and here I was, this gloomy-looking creature. I almost didn’t go to the audition, and when I did, all these blond Adonises were to the right and left of me. I looked like one of their agents!”
The director Albert Lewin had just written and directed a successful transcription of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, and he was given a large budget to make an opulent and literate version of Wilde’s novel, though critics objected to the many liberties that were taken with the story. The strict censorship of the time worked to some extent in the film’s favour, making the suggestions of corruption and decadence all the more telling for being oblique.
Harry Stradling’s photography, which blazed into colour from black-and- white when it showed the ageing, increasingly dissolute portrait (by Ivan Albright), won an Academy Award. George Sanders was ideally cast as the cynical misogynist Lord Henry Wotton and Angela Lansbury won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sybil Vane, the music-hall singer whose plaintive rendition of “Little Yellow Bird” wins Gray’s heart before he is persuaded by Wotton to jilt her cruelly.
Hatfield’s enigmatic, passive performance was given a mixed reception (one critic described his lack of facial animation to that of an actress playing Trilby while under the hypnotic spell of Svengali). Variety reported, “He plays it with little feeling, as apparently intended, and does it well . . . he’s singularly Narcissistic all the way.” The majority felt that the actor’s immobile features and flat tones suggested the mixture of beauty and depravity called for, but although the film was a great success it failed to ignite Hatfield’s film career. “The film didn’t make me popular in Hollywood,” he commented later. “It was too odd, too avant- garde, too ahead of its time. The decadence, the hints of bisexuality and so on, made me a leper! Nobody knew I had a sense of humour, and people wouldn’t even have lunch with me.”
His next film was an independent production, the off-beat Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), adapted by Burgess Meredith from Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Le Journal d’une femme de chambre and directed by Jean Renoir, who was a great admirer of Paulette Goddard, Meredith’s wife and the star of the film. In this strongly cast production, Hatfield held his own as the consumptive son of a wealthy landowner who finds strength and redemption through the love of a chambermaid, but the film, now regarded as a minor classic, was only a succes d’estime at the time of its release, and Hatfield returned to MGM to play a subsidiary role as one of the scientists working on the atom bomb in the studio’s semi-documentary of the weapon’s development, The Beginning or the End (1947).
He had a better role in Michael Curtiz’s enjoyable thriller The Unsuspected (1947), as an artist driven to alcohol by his wife’s infidelities. In Walter Wanger’s costly but ponderous Joan of Arc (1948), Hatfield played Father Pasquerel, chaplain to Joan (Ingrid Bergman), but, when this was followed by roles as the villain in two B movies, The Checkered Coat (1950, as a psychotic killer called Creepy) and Chinatown at Midnight (1950), he decided to return to the stage.
In 1952 he appeared on Broadway as Dominic in Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed, directed by Laurence Olivier, and the following year played Lord Byron and Don Quixote in Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real, directed by Elia Kazan. He was Prince Paul in the Broadway production of Anastasia (1954), played the title role in Julius Caesar in the inaugural season of the American Shakespeare Festival at Connecticut, Stratford (1955) and appeared as Don John in John Gielgud’s legendary production of Much Ado About Nothing (1959).
He occasionally returned to Hollywood, notably for two sexually ambivalent roles: the epicene follower of Billy the Kid (Paul Newman) in Arthur Penn’s film of Gore Vidal’s The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and a homosexual antique dealer considered a suspect in The Boston Strangler (1968) – the scene in which he is questioned by a liberal police officer (Henry Fonda) was one of the most potent in the film. He was in two of 1965’s epics, King of Kings and El Cid, and in 1986 returned to the screen to play the ailing grandfather of Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Diane Keaton in Crimes of the Heart.
His prolific television work included The Rivals and The Importance of Being Ernest (both 1950), the title roles in The Count of Monte Cristo (1958) and Don Juan in Hell (1960), episodes of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Murder She Wrote, and in 1963 an Emmy-nominated performance as Rothschild in The Invincible Mr Disraeli. In recent years he toured Germany, Northern Ireland, Latvia and Russia in The Son of Whistler’s Mother, a one-man play about James McNeill Whistler, and in July 1997 he made a personal appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in connection with an exhibition of paintings by Albright (including Dorian Gray).
A bachelor, Hurd Hatfield had lived for many years on an estate in Ireland (he also owned a house on Long Island), commuting for acting assignments. He recently stated that he had accepted his permanent association with the role of Gray, even though the film had for him been “a terrible ordeal in self- control, everything being so cerebral”. He added, “But not many actors are fortunate enough to have made a classic. One friend told me it’s a good thing I didn’t make Dracula and have my entire professional life dominated by that!”
William Rukard Hurd Hatfield, actor: born New York 7 December 1918; died Monkstown, Co Cork 25 December 1998.
For “The Independent” obituary on Hurd Hatfield, please click here.
George Brent made his screen debut in “Under Suspicion” (1930). Initially a slightly tough talking New York type, Brent proved an effective romantic foil to a wide variety of dominant female stars of the 1930s and 40s, most notably at Warner Brothers, where he was tenured from 1932 to 1942. Capable of playing the strong but silent type, or the urbane and cynical, Brent often spent his screen time desiring his leading lady or being pursued by her. His playing was invariably professional and amiable if not dynamic or idiosyncratic, and so he proved a natural in “women’s films” in which the focus was securely on a more galvanizing female actor who was a bigger star. Among his female paramours over the years were Bebe Daniels (“42nd Street,” 1933), Greta Garbo (“The Painted Veil,” 1934), Ginger Rogers (“In Person,” 1935), Myrna Loy (“The Rains Came,” 1939), Barbara Stanwyck (“My Reputation,” 1946), and Claudette Colbert (“Bride for Sale,” 1949).
Brent most often appeared as romantic lead in deferential support to three of Warners’ classiest star actresses: Kay Francis (“Living on Velvet,” 1935, “Give Me Your Heart,” 1936, “Secrets of an Actress,” 1938); Ruth Chatterton (“The Crash,” 1932, “Female,” 1933), to whom he was married from 1932 to 1934; and, particularly, Bette Davis (“Front Page Woman,” 1935, “Jezebel,” 1938, “Dark Victory,” 1939, “The Great Lie,” 1941). He also occasionally enjoyed a role off the beaten path, as in Robert Siodmak’s memorable Gothic melodrama, “The Spiral Staircase” (1946).
Brent sustained his prolific output after he and Warners parted company, but his films gradually diminished in importance in the later 40s. Very much a leading man type, he never made the transition to character roles, and so left the cinema in 1953 after appearing in a series of minor efforts. Two of his other four wives were actresses Constance Worth and Ann Sheridan (opposite whom he made “Honeymoon for Three,” 1941). Brent came out of retirement for 1978’s “Born Again”. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
For an article on George Brewnt please click here.
Angel On The Amazon, poster, US poster art, George Brent (left), Constance Bennett (second left), Vera Ralston (center), 1948. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Submarine D-1, poster, Wayne Morris, Pat O’Brien, George Brent on window card, 1937. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)TWIN BEDS, US poster, top from left: George Brent, Joan Bennett, bottom: Mischa Auer, 1942 Courtesy Everett Collection ACHTUNG AUFNAHMEDATUM GESCHÄTZT PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xCourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MCDTWBE EC002The Purchase Price, poster, from left: George Brent, Barbara Stanwyck, 1932. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)The Great Lie, poster, George Brent, Bette Davis, 1941. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Dictionary of Irish biography:
Brent, George (1904–79), actor, was born George Nolan 15 March 1904 at Main St., Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, son of John Nolan, shopkeeper, and Mary Nolan (née McGuinness). Orphaned in 1915, he moved briefly to New York where he was cared for by an aunt, returning later to Dublin to finish his education. He took up acting at the Abbey Theatre, where he had already played some minor roles but, suspected by the British authorities of IRAinvolvement, he fled to Canada, where he continued to act, working in stock companies for two years. He again travelled to New York, finding work with stock companies and founding three of his own. His appearances on Broadway in the late 1920s were noticed in Hollywood. He was talented, but his good looks and reliability were as important in ensuring that he achieved over a hundred screen credits during his career. Most of these were in Warner Brothers productions (1930–53).
Never a powerful box-office draw, he was employed by the studio to carry middle-ranking projects while providing support to A-list stars in larger undertakings. Unambitious and without pretensions, he was happy to take the money while performing quietly and professionally. This led unkind reviewers to describe his performances as having ‘all the animation of a penguin’ and as varying between those in which he was with or without a moustache. Once he abandoned the ‘rugged hero’ roles in which he was initially cast, he provided competent but understated portrayals, making him an ideal foil for the domineering leading ladies of this period. In 1934 he delivered just such a performance opposite Greta Garbo in the screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s ‘The painted veil’. He was also a good foil for Merle Oberon, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck (four times), Ruth Chatterton (four times), and Bette Davis (eleven times). Davis was one of the many leading ladies with whom he had affairs and Ruth Chatterton was the second (1932–4) of his six wives. He married two other actresses, Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942–3).
His best performances were probably in Jezebel (1938), for which Davis won an Oscar; Dark victory (1939) with Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan; The rains came (1939), a disaster movie with Tyrone Power; and The spiral staircase (1945), a horror-thriller set in England. He never filmed in Ireland, but starred with James Cagney in a movie about an Irish-American regiment, The fighting 69th (1940). His career entered a terminal slide in the late 1940s when he appeared in dross such as The corpse came C.O.D. (1947), a severe decline for someone who had acted in 42nd Street (1933). When the movie offers dried up he starred in a TV series, Wire service (1956–9), before retiring to run his horse-breeding ranch in California. He made one more brief cameo in the movies playing a judge in the dire Born again (1978), the story of Nixon aide George Colson’s discovery of Christianity when jailed after Watergate. He died of emphysema 27 May 1979 in California
